Over 48 percent of Italian children ages 6 to 17 failed to read a single book in 2014, according to statistics from the Programme for International Student Assessment of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, recently published by Save the Children Italia Onlus in its report Illuminiamo il Futuro 2030 (Illuminate the Future 2030).
The study also found that 69.4 percent of Italian children aged 6–17 had not visited an archaeological site, 55.2 percent had not set foot inside a museum, 45.5 percent were inactive in sports and 64 percent failed to take part in any extracurricular activities in school.
Figures are even higher in Italy’s impoverished south, where lack of participation in any extracurricular activities are 84 percent in Sicily, 79 percent in Campania and 78 percent in Calabria.
‘Data emerging from our analysis reveal an alarming phenomenon: in Italy, a too-wide group of adolescents lacks the skills necessary for growth and making their way in the world,’ said Valerio Neri, director-general of Save the Children in Italy. The study also found one in four 15-year-olds are below the minimum competency level in mathematics and nearly one in five are below the minimum competency level in reading. Among the findings for adolescents from low-income families, these figures drop to 36 percent and 29 percent, respectively. ‘Educational poverty cannot be an inescapable destiny, and it is unacceptable that the future of children is determined by their social or geographic background or their gender,’ said Raffaella Milano, director of Italy-Europe programs for Save the Children.
