ITALY
SCHOOL :ISSTITUTO ISTUZIONE SUPERIORE GALILEI CONTINI
PRINCIPAL : SALVATORE LEONARDO FIORI
CONTACT PERSON : RITA MALEDDU
"The Liceo Artististico "Contini", is a public secondary school on applied arts. Two years ago it underwent an important change planned by our Minister of Education and acquired the status of Liceo, before that it was a vocational school on applied arts with two main departments focusing on the production of ceramic or wood objects. These two peculiarities represent artistic traditions of the town Oristano, that 50 years ago founded this school to carry on and pass down the practical skills and crafts typical for this area of Sardinia.Today the curriculum of our pupils includes the usual high school subjects like:Italian,History and Geography plus some more art subjects: Model and Technical drawing, Painting, Design, Sculpting, Wood and Ceramics Labs. Because of the Lab classes of the school timetable we have a number of pupils with special needs. 11% of our studends have some disabilities and are offered a support by special needs teachers. As a consequence social inclusion plays an important role for our school either for disabled students or for students coming from socially disadvantaged situations:living in rural isolated areas, children of separated parents, parents'unemployment, poverty, migrants (especially chinese). The school is very active in the development of weaker students offering them afternoon remedial classes twice a week. We also run special projects on ancillary subjects like theatre, to fight the high drop-out rate of our pupils, increase their motivation in their learning process, help them acquire self-confidence and so find out about new strategies towards a more successful learning process. The school has been labelled by the regional council as an education school with a high drop-out rate.
The school is situated in the urban area of Oristano, a capital town, and with its 30,000 inhabitants the largest town of the same province. The pupils attending this school come from nearby rural areas and also from the neighbouring provinces of the island and travel everyday up to 120 km to get to school and back. The economy of the area is based on agriculture, tourism in the summer months, small industries for the preservation of farming products. The unemployment rate, especially among young people under 30, always was and still is among the highest of the country, with consequent migration for better life expectation.