Sardinia is not a land for children: more than one in 5 minors live in relative poverty
Not only the demographic decline: school dropout, poor public services and increasing social inequalities are plagues for children and young people
Sardinia is not a child-friendly land.
This is the picture that emerges from the data contained in the XII edition of the Atlas of Childhood at Risk in Italy "The future is already here", elaborated by Save the Children and disseminated a few days after the World Day of Childhood and Adolescence of the November 20.
On the island, in addition to the demographic decline, there are many problems affecting childhood: more than one in five minors (22.8%) live in conditions of relative poverty (i.e. commensurate with the standard of living prevailing in a given geographical area ), a percentage higher than the national average.
The "early school leavers", ie children aged between 18 and 24 who have not completed their education cycle because they dropped out of school earlier, are 12%, a much higher rate than the European average (9.9%), while the NEETs - young people between 15 and 29 who do not work, do not study and do not attend a training course - reach 26.1%, a figure that slightly exceeds the Italian average ( 23.3%), but which is double that recorded in the Old Continent (13.7%).
Social inequalities are evident from the earliest years of life: on the island just over one in 10 children (13%) has access to nursery schools or supplementary services financed by the municipalities, against 14.7% of the national figure.
Furthermore, the average per capita expenditure of the Sardinian municipalities for early childhood (children under 3 years of age) is 612 euros, a rather low figure if we consider that the Italian average is 906 euros (with the peak of Trento, which provides € 2,481 for each).
The situation relating to primary schools is fragmented by area: in Oristano only 10.3% of the classes use full time, in Cagliari 34.2%, while Sassari and Nuoro respectively reach 41.8% and 47.2%, exceeding the national average (36.3%).
Also for school canteens, there are significant territorial disparities: in the province of Oristano only 16.3% use it, in Cagliari 46.1%, in Nuoro 50.9%, up to Sassari with 70.1% , compared to a national average of 56.1%.
Inequalities are also clearly visible when analyzing academic performance. The implicit dispersion, that is the failure to reach the sufficiency in all the Invalsi tests, in Italy is on average 10% in the last year of high school. In Sardinia, on the other hand, it is much higher: in the province of Cagliari it is equal to 12.3%, in that of Oristano it is 17.3%, in the province of Sassari it is 18.8%, up to the provinces of Nuoro and South Sardinia with 21.3% and 25.6%.
The months of school closure and distance learning during the pandemic also weighed on students' performance.
(Unioneonline / F)
