Italian school is very different from American school.

Italian children start at the same age but we have 13 grades.

There is a nursery to parents that work and nobody can stay with the children, it is for babies born. After that is pre-school, it is obligatory for every child from three to six years old, it’s only three years.

Then there is elementary school with five grades, middle school with three grades and then high school with three or five grades.

The school system is very different; the students stay in the classroom, it is the teacher that changes class so you’re always with the same people every day, usually in every class there are from 18 kids to 24. We don’t have lockers and school sports and you cannot choose your classes. Elementary school and middle school are the same for everyone. High school is different because you basically have to know what you would like to do with your future and then choose the right school for you. There are a lot of schools, some are only three years long, but if you want to graduate after these three years you have to go to another school for two more years. There are a lot of different schools, some already teach you a job and some teach you something you need for what you want to do, but to make that your job you need to go to the university. In every school there is a room where there are computers but the school doesn’t give every student a computer, only some private schools sometimes give iPads. 

There are vocational schools for basically everything, after that you don’t need a degree to work because you already learn your work at school. We do not have particular classes like cooking, sewing, art class; there are different schools so if you want to be a chef you’ll go to a cooking school and inside that school after the second years you’ll chose if you want to be a barman/barwoman, a chef, past chef or waitress and the same basically for everything else. The same is if you want to be a stylist, you’ll choose the right school, the first two years you’ll do everything that you can be if you work with clothes, then after that you’ll decide what you want to do, to design clothes, to marketing clothes. Even if you go to a vocational school if you want, then you can go to a university. 

My Italian school is very big, there are 2,000 kids. You are not able to choose what class you want to do but there are some courses you pick based on your interest, but if in the course you decide to take there are some classes you don’t like you cannot quit the class. My Italian school has five different courses.

We have more subjects to study. The one that I do is human science courses and I have 12 classes. I study Latin and Latin literature, Italian and Italian literature, EP, human science which comprises:psychology, anthropology, pedagogy and sociology, physic, math which comprises algebra and geometry, English and English literature, history, science which comprises: biology, chemistry and science, philosophy, art history and religion that is the only one you can choose to do it or not. 

There are private and public schools, usually private schools start on Monday to Friday and public schools are from Monday to Saturday. My school is a public one so we go also on Saturday but every school’s days start at 8 a.m. and ends at 1 p.m., we don’t have lunch at school, at 11 a.m. we have a little break to have a snack that lasts 15 minutes. Private school starts at 8 a.m. and usually ends at 3 or 4 p.m., they have a snack around 11 a.m. and then have a school lunch around 1 p.m. After that I go home, have lunch and then I start doing my homework and study, if I have some free time after that I go to the gym before or after dinner, we usually have dinner at 8 p.m. in Italy, after that I shower and go to bed. I usually don’t hang out with my friends during school days because I don’t have a lot of free time and neither do they. 

But there are a lot of different schools so some schools have to do more hours than others. My high school does 30 hours a week because we have to study a lot so we don’t stay at school a lot of time. We don’t have a lot of homework to do, but we have to study a lot. If you choose to do a high school in Italy you have to study at least 2 or 3 hours every day to get a sufficient grade.

The grades are a lot different, we have 1 to 10, 1 is the lowest and 10 the highest. In elementary school are from 5 to 10 and usually in middle school are from 4 to 10. Actually in high school only a few teachers use 1 to 10, they usually have 3 or 4 to 10. If you get a 1 is because you literally didn’t even write your name, but usually the teachers start from at least 3 because if you take 1 or 2 it is very difficult to get a good average, also because they barely give 9 or 10, to get them you have to be more than perfect. To get our graduation we have to take some tests, usually in late June or beginning in July. It’s after school is over, right after school’s end  the students of the last year will not with what grade they will start the test, it’s usually pretty similar to your average during the five years of high school, then you have to take some tests and at the one one oral test alone, with all you teacher, after that you’re done and at the mid July you’ll know with what grade you’re end the high school.

If you fail one year you have to do it again, to do not fail you have to have all your grade at least 6, if you get some classes that are not over 6 you have the summer to study and at the end of July you will have a test, if you pass the test you’ll to the next year, if you don’t you have to do it again, you can only have a max of three classes under 6, if you have more you’ll fail the all year. But this is only for high school, during middle school if you have some classes under 6 you don’t have to do a test and you’ll pass the year anyway.

We don’t have school sports, if you want to do some sport you have to do it on your own.

We have public and private universities but they are not expensive like here, if you choose to go to a private university usually you have to pay around 3,000 euro for the whole year, barely more than that.

Italian teachers are also a lot different from Americans ones, Italians one is really strict and Americans one for me it’s like they are always nice to you and sometimes they can be your friends, they care about you, Italian one do not.

Usually in every school there is at least one gym and one auditoriu.

This is my school, there are two more buildings, one is yellow and the other is blue, the green one is the biggest, the blue is medium and the yellow is where there is the bar and like 3 classes, it’s very small.

This is how Italian schools are from the inside.