ROME-- Italy’s 2016 ‘Concorso Scuola’, a competitive examination process which school teachers are being obliged to undertake, risks being deemed a total failure due to huge delays, meaning that in September over 10,000 teaching posts will be left without successful candidates.

 The competition, brainchild of Italy’s Minister of Education Stefania Giannini in 2015, includes examination procedures for every school subject and for all the different levels of scholastic education, including nursery, primary and secondary, and also exams for teaching assistants.

 The latest alarm about the procedure has come from Italian magazine ‘Tuttoscuola’ that has published an in-depth account of the tests and their results. According to the magazine, 315 out of the roughly 800 competitive procedures will not be completed in time for teaching staff to be accepted for the reopening of the schools in September.

 55.2 percent of teachers have been rejected by the ministerial board so far, and if this percentage stays the same, the number of places that will remain unsecured will rise to 21,000, Tuttoscuola calculates.

 Nearly half of the examination procedures will not be completed by the start of the new school year, despite Giannini’s guarantee of smooth completion. The final deadline for intake is September 15, which has already been slightly postponed.

 Very few announcements of successful winners have been made so far: only those in niche subject areas with little candidates, or successful teaching assistants. In the vast majority of cases the process is still in full swing.

 Only the candidates who are currently far enough along in the process as to be able to sit their oral exams in the period between the end of August and the beginning of September will manage to make it in time. The rest of the exam procedures will have to be postponed until 2017.

 Many speculations are being made about the results of these tests, as the failure rates are far surpassing what was expected. Some think it could be the teachers who are not well enough prepared for the exams, although perhaps debatable as these are all qualified teachers, some of whom have already had to pass similar tests. Others claim it is down to the excessive difficulty of the exams.

 According to Tuttoscuola’s estimate, the number of unsecured posts could be left at around 21,000 by the end of the examination period. However, many exam results are still being waited upon, and many oral tests are still to be held, so the final number will depend upon several different variables. Currently, with half of the definitive results available, it is already possible to say with certainty that at least 10,500 posts will not have successful winners.

 If the figures do reach the estimated ballpark, the competition would be deemed a colossal failure, and the minister would ironically be forced to call back the same teachers she had just rejected as temporary staff.

 nkd