School bonus: now the unions want to decide who gets it.

SCHOOL BONUS FOR TEACHERS –

Once the law is passed, attempts are made to dismantle it. Or at least to renegotiate it. This is what is happening with the reform on school, presented by the government as "a revolution" and now, just seven months after its approval, at the center of a sensational tug-of-war. The fuse exploded during a meeting on February 24th between the Ministry of Education's top brass, the unions (the three confederal and the two independent, Snals and Gilda), and the representative of school principals, the former principals. Discussions were needed regarding the €200 million in a special fund that schools will be able to distribute (approximately €18 per school) to teachers based on three criteria, enshrined in the law: quality of teaching, results achieved, and responsibilities assumed. In a word: merit, which presupposes evaluation. Merit and evaluation, two words that have always been taboo in our school universe.

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MERIT AND EVALUATION –

Before the astonished gazes of two directors general of the ministry, Jacopo Greco (Personnel) and Carmela Palumbo (Ordinance and Autonomy), the five unions, en bloc and unanimous, made their request. Since it is an "additional salary," this is the brief of the demand, it must be negotiated with the union representatives. Full stop. It matters little if the law says otherwise, and it is already being implemented: in the majority of Italian schools, evaluation committees have been established (with representatives of teachers, families, and students, and an external member) that must establish the criteria for the distribution of bonuses, which will then be awarded to individual teachers based on the principal's choice. Moreover, no one better than a principal is in a position to know and evaluate which teachers deserve additional recognition, above and beyond their basic salary, for the quality and results of their work. "Now at least the objective is clear: the union wants to undermine this law, make it unenforceable, trampling on the rule of law and Parliament's decisions," protests Giorgio Rembado, president of the National Association of Principals. "And they want to continue to make and break Italian schools." "We don't need bosses and petty bosses to implement a reform, where it's right that we be involved in its management. Schools are a community, not a barracks," replies Maddalena Gissi, national secretary of the CISL-Scuola union, with equal force.

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TEACHER BONUS –

The union, which has never hidden its hostility to the variable part of teachers' salaries (in the first version of the reform it was supposed to reach approximately a third of the total), after having swallowed the "Good School", it is trying to orient it precisely in its most delicate and innovative partAnd as a solution to the conflict that has now exploded, he proposes to allocate the funds exactly as is done for the distribution of the School Institution Fund and the Fund for Educational Offering, two instruments that predate the government's reform. Renzi, and rely on negotiations with the union representatives. In short, the request is this: the ministry allocates the funds to the school, the evaluation committee establishes general criteria for distributing them, and the union negotiates with the school's director the actual allocation of resources. And so it ends up... dominus Yet another treasure trove, which, in a school system impoverished by decades of "all-for-all" handouts and constant cuts, becomes invaluable for the distribution of power in the education sector. Typically, whoever controls the purse, rules. In exchange, the union grants social peace within individual schools and the entire system. "The discontent is enormous in all schools, and our proposal serves to stop the conflict at its source. If someone exacerbates it, it will mean we'll have thousands of bonus allocation decisions challenged in court, and we'll make the lawyers who work in this sector happy," warns Gissi.

For now, the ministry's two directors general have only been able to stall. Rightly, they have been barricaded in their duty to report to political leaders, first and foremost the minister. Stefania giannini, before a final decision. And the dossier from the minister's desk has already arrived at Palazzo Chigi, as Matteo Renzi is expected to speak before taking a definitive position. The only certainties are two. The first is that the ministry directors have already notified the unions to be ready for a new meeting in the first ten days of March, therefore soon. The second, according to some rumors we gathered on Viale Trastevere, is that the super-bureaucrats will not show up empty-handed at the new meeting, nor with the intention of resuming the discussion. On the contrary. They will submit a ministerial circular to all Italian schools, which will clarify both the possibility, or otherwise, of negotiating bonuses between the school principal and the unions at each individual school; and the composition of the evaluation committees. The unions, however, are demanding that they function only if they are fully constituted, with all members present at the time of the vote. The war over the "Good School," in short, seems to have only just begun, and it will be up to the Prime Minister, rather than Minister Giannini, to decide whether and how to fight it. This will also involve measuring its short-term impact on consensus, as Secretary Maddalena Gissi says: "The government would do well to consider the fact that there are important local elections looming, and I don't know how much it would benefit, at this time, from a public outcry over schools..." Another very explicit message.

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