Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara
said Thursday that Italian teachers' pay structure may be
reformed so that salaries vary from region to region and he also
mooted private forms of funding for Italian State schools,
sparking outrage from opposition parties and trade unions .
"The State school system needs new forms of funding, including
for teachers' salaries, which may become differentiated on a
regional basis," Valditara told an event organized by PwC and
the Gedi group.
"It's necessary to find new roads, including experimental ones,
of synergy between the industrial system, civil society and
schools in order to finance education".
Francesco Sinopoli, the secretary of the Flc Cgil trade union,
said differentiating teacher salaries on the basis of the
varying cost of living in different regions would "take us back
50 years.
"The combination of the entry of private entities and the
disarticulation of the contractual system amounts to the
destruction of public schooling," Sinopoli told ANSA.
"It's the worst thing you could do".
Peppe Provenzano of the opposition centre-left Democratic Party
(PD) said Valditara's proposals "definitively split" Italy.
5-Star Movement (M5S) lawmakers Luca Pirondini and Anna Laura
Orrico said Valditara had "thrown off his mask" and shown that
he wanted a "school system of inequality".
However, Mario Rusconi, the head of the Rome section of school
principals association ANP, said it would be "sensible" to raise
teachers' salaries in northern regions where the cost of living
is higher.
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