Dalla piramide alla rete: il caso delle reti di scuole

The reform of the education system undertaken by the 16th legislature in Italy seems to break away from the past by placing particular emphasis on formal school collaboration frameworks. In the present scenario the functional autonomy of schools is no longer exercised through the networking activities that were set up under the prior Regulation on School Autonomy, but it is veering towards different forms of organised collaboration. Thus recent national reforms on school autonomy seem to point towards a new interpretation of the concept of school autonomy whereby schools are encouraged “from the centre” to engage in leaner collaboration frameworks that also aim to prevent the sprawling of divergent regional reticular models. Significantly, under the revised Title V of the Constitution the school system consists today of a range of different regional systems and the pyramidal structure of the past has been replaced by web-like patterns governed through coordination and regulated by vertical and horizontal subsidiarity mechanisms. Therefore today the model of collaboration which appears best suited to reflect the complexity of territorial organization calls for the creation of networks that bring together schools and operators from outside the school sector within the regional system with the support of public institutions. Such initiatives are expected to translate into collaborative regional frameworks in which all the players contribute to the achievement of shared objectives.