Adnkronos (Adnkronos) – Promoting academic well-being and active participation as tools to prevent school dropout: this is the goal of the collaboration between Save the Children and UniCredit, which, through the Carta Etica Fund, has supported Fuoriclasse in Movimento since 2024. This program, launched by Save the Children for over ten years, promotes the active participation of students in school life.
At the heart of Fuoriclasse in Movimento are the Fuoriclasse Councils, participatory bodies that involve student representatives, teachers, and school administrators. Through assemblies, classroom consultations, elections, and meetings with school administrators, children and young people can identify needs and critical issues and contribute to the development of concrete solutions to improve their school. Proposals may concern teaching, school spaces, classroom relations, and the relationship between school and the local community.
Experience shows how participation can translate into concrete interventions, from designing laboratories and new learning spaces to maintaining school environments and implementing active citizenship activities with the local community.
And thanks to these initiatives, in the 2025-2026 school year, 91,6% consider the Outstanding Councils useful for giving students a greater voice, 86,5% perceive adults paying greater attention to their opinions, and 83,5% say they feel better at school.
Teachers also expressed positive feedback on the project, with 94,5% believing the Fuoriclasse Councils are an effective tool for listening to students, and 84,5% stating they are increasingly using participatory educational approaches. The initiative is part of a national trend of improving school dropout rates, but still characterized by significant inequalities. According to the latest ISTAT data, in 2025, the percentage of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 who left the education and training system early dropped to 8,2%, compared to 9,8% in 2024, achieving the European target set for 2030 ahead of schedule. However, the phenomenon remains more widespread among boys (10,1%) than girls (6,2%) and among young people with non-Italian citizenship (26,2%, compared to 6,7% of Italians). Regarding implicit dropout, which involves students who complete their school career without achieving adequate levels of learning, INVALSI 2026 data shows a reduction to 6,3%, from 8,7% in 2025.
Dropout, however, is detected once the event has already occurred, while the process can begin much earlier, with loss of motivation, relationship difficulties, a poor sense of belonging, and a lack of engagement in school life. This is why Save the Children intervenes in the first cycle of education, focusing on well-being, positive relationships, self-confidence, and participation—factors that can strengthen students' bonds with school. In the 2025-2026 school year, UniCredit's support directly reached 130 schools across 16 regions, involving 19.981 students, 1.428 teachers, 530 classes, and 130 Fuoriclasse Councils, in challenging areas on the outskirts of large cities and in inland areas. One of the settings where Save the Children's project, supported by UniCredit, is being implemented is the Morricone Comprehensive Institute in Rome's San Basilio district. Representatives of the organization and the company met and took stock of the situation. This opportunity provided a firsthand look at the experience of the Fuoriclasse Councils and the Institute's efforts to formalize participatory practices in school governance.
"For over ten years, with Fuoriclasse in Movimento, we have been working to prevent school dropouts and promote the well-being and participation of children and adolescents, offering them concrete spaces to express their ideas, needs, and proposals to improve the school they experience every day," says Giancarla Pancione, Director of Marketing, Fundraising & Brand at Save the Children, the organization that for over 100 years has been fighting to save at-risk children and guarantee them a future. "This project demonstrates how listening to students and involving them in decisions that affect them can help build more inclusive school communities," she continues, "that are welcoming and responsive to their needs. UniCredit's support allows us to strengthen and expand this journey, bringing the Fuoriclasse in Movimento experience to an ever-increasing number of children and adolescents, and recognizing young people as active participants in their own present and the future of their school."
"Combating school dropout means intervening before it becomes a reality, creating the conditions for girls and boys to feel heard, involved, and an active part of their school community. This is the value of Fuoriclasse in Movimento and our collaboration with Save the Children: a project that, thanks to UniCredit's Carta Etica Fund, allows us to have a concrete presence in local communities and contribute to building more inclusive and participatory educational environments. The results achieved confirm the importance of investing not only in access to education, but also in the quality of the school experience, giving young people the tools and spaces to express themselves, participate, and contribute to change," says Stefano Gallo, Head of Territorial Development at UniCredit. The survey conducted at the end of the 2025-2026 school year among over 2.200 students shows that 91,6% consider the Fuoriclasse Councils useful for giving students a greater voice, 86,5% perceive adults to be more attentive to their opinions, and 84,3% believe that schools take students' needs more seriously. In terms of well-being, 89,7% report experiencing more positive emotions, 87,5% report an increased ability to collaborate, 86,2% report better relationships with classmates and teachers, and 83,5% feel better at school. 84,1% also report greater involvement in school life, and 86,7% report a greater ability to promote and defend their rights. Among the Fuoriclasse Council representatives, 85,2% feel their voices are truly heard, over twenty percentage points higher than students who do not hold representative positions.
The 644 teachers involved in the monitoring also confirmed the initiative's value: 94,5% considered the Fuoriclasse Councils an effective tool for listening to students, 91,8% believed the project improved academic well-being, and 95% observed an increase in positive emotions among students. Teachers also reported increased participation in school life (91,5%), improved collaboration skills (88,8%), strengthened self-esteem and personal resources (87,2%), and improved relationships (85,6%). The change also affected adults: 86,8% stated they had strengthened their skills in participatory methodologies, and 84,5% said they were increasingly using educational approaches that focused on listening and engaging students. To strengthen the participation of the entire school community over time, in 2025, Save the Children launched, in collaboration with Ashoka Italia, a three-year pilot program involving 18 comprehensive schools from the Fuoriclasse in Movimento network. The goal is to strengthen the role of the Fuoriclasse Councils within the school system. After the first year, 68,8% of schools have started or completed the formalization phase, and 75% have incorporated the Councils into official school documents. Save the Children has been implementing Fuoriclasse in Movimento for over ten years, aiming to prevent school dropout and combat educational inequalities by promoting student well-being and participation. To date, the program involves 250 schools throughout Italy, 39.526 students, 2.699 teachers, 990 classes, and 250 Fuoriclasse Councils, organizations through which children and adolescents can express their needs and suggestions and make a concrete contribution to the life of their school.
News
webinfo@adnkronos.com (Web Info)