It is mid-October 2026: Year 8 students (the last year of lower secondary school, age 13-14 in Italy) have been in class for a month, and the orientation advice (consiglio orientativo) arrives in December, in about eight weeks. Open days for upper secondary schools run from November to January, and online enrolment usually opens in the second half of January. This post is about all types of school — licei, technical and vocational — because the orientation advice is not tied to one particular school: it is an opinion that the lower secondary school gives on the path, and how it is read matters more than what it says.
I am writing it now because the advice, when it arrives, almost always generates two wrong reactions: it is taken as a sentence, or it is ignored as a formality. Neither helps your child.
What it is, and what it isn’t
The orientation advice is provided for by Ministerial Decree no. 229 of 14 November 2024. It is drawn up by the class council of Year 8, that is, the teachers your child sees every day, and is made available to families through the E-Portfolio on the Unica platform (the Ministry’s online portal for schools and families). It arrives in December.
Two facts to hold on to:
- It is not binding. You can enrol your child in any school, even against the advice.
- It is not a grade on the child. It is a reading, made by adults who know him or her, of how he or she works, what comes easily and where he or she struggles.
What the advice doesn’t say is just as important. It doesn’t say that one school is “higher” than another. It doesn’t say that your child “won’t make it” at a liceo. It doesn’t know the specific school you are considering, its study load, its teachers. It photographs a thirteen-year-old in December of Year 8, not who he or she will be at fifteen.
How to read it, line by line
When it arrives, avoid reading only the recommended track. Look for three things.
1. What it is based on. A useful piece of advice doesn’t just say “science liceo” or “technical institute”: it describes, even in a few lines, how the child works. If there is only the label and no reasoning, the first thing to do is ask the teachers where it comes from.
2. Whether it talks about skills or results. “He has high grades” and “he has a solid method” are two different things. A child with high grades obtained by repeating from memory may struggle when in upper secondary school the shift goes from repetition to reasoning. A child with average grades who is curious and consistent can grow a lot in a different environment.
3. Whether it is consistent with what you see at home. You observe things the teachers don’t see: how your child tackles a task he or she doesn’t like, whether he or she asks for help, whether he or she organises alone, how tired he or she gets. If the advice surprises you, positively or negatively, it is worth understanding why.
Questions to ask the teachers
A useful meeting is not “how is my child doing?”. It is three precise questions.
- “What have you seen, concretely, that leads you to recommend this track?” Ask for an example, an episode, a type of exercise.
- “Where is he or she most fragile, and is that fragility a gap to fill or a trait of the way he or she works?” A gap in maths can be recovered. A deep aversion to desk study is another piece of information.
- “If my choice were different from your advice, what should I watch out for in the first months?” This question turns disagreement into a plan, instead of a clash.
In the meantime the school has other tools. Since Ministerial Decree 328/2022 every school has a tutor teacher and an orientation teacher, and at least 30 hours of formative orientation are provided during the year. Ask what was really done in those hours and whether your child had the chance to talk to someone about his or her own inclinations: the answers often say more than the final document.
If the advice doesn’t match your child’s choice
It happens often, and there are two versions.
The child wants more than the advice suggests. For example the advice says technical and he or she wants the science liceo. In this case there is no point either in imposing the advice or in ignoring it. You need to ask what really attracts him or her: the liceo as a path, or the fact that friends are going? Then you need to look at the concrete study load of that school and ask whether your child, today, has a method to bear it. If not, one can be built: but it has to be done right away, not in November of Year 1 with the first 4 (a failing mark on Italy’s 1-10 scale) already on the register.
The child wants less than the advice suggests. This is the case of the good student who wants “an easy school” out of fear of maths. Here the risk is the opposite: giving up a path he or she would like because of an anxiety that can be worked on. Before giving up, it is worth working out whether the fear concerns the subject or a negative past experience with a method that didn’t work.
In both cases the rule is the same: the advice is information, the decision is the family’s, and a choice against the advice is not a mistake if it is made knowing what lies ahead.
Liceo, technical, vocational: no hierarchies
A premise I care about: there is no ladder running from the liceo at the top to vocational school at the bottom. They are different paths, which call for different ways of learning. For more on the calendar and visits I refer you to open days and choosing an upper secondary school; here is the summary for deciding.
| Track | How learning mostly happens | Who tends to do well |
|---|---|---|
| Liceo | Theory, abstraction, a lot of individual study | Those who like reasoning about concepts and don’t tire of reading and writing |
| Technical | Theory plus application, labs, projects | Those who want to understand how things work and see them in practice |
| Vocational | Practical skills, work placements, work on real cases | Those who learn by doing and want a direct link with a trade |
The music and dance liceo is a case apart: it requires an admission test, which falls between December and February, so before or during enrolment. If your child is thinking of it, find out right away about the dates of the individual school.
The table is not a ranking. A child who learns by doing is not “worse off” than one who learns by reading: he or she is in another place. The trouble is putting him or her in the wrong place.
How to use open days
Open days are a few afternoons: go with questions, not just curiosity. The ones that help:
- How many hours of study at home are needed on average in Year 1? Ask a student, not just the teacher.
- What are the tests like? Written, oral, points-based, credit-based. In which subjects they are most frequent.
- What happens to those who are struggling in October? Are there help desks, catch-up courses, tutoring? A school that answers precisely knows how to manage the problem.
- What do students do afterwards? University, work, ITS (higher technical institutes): not to judge, but to understand the direction.
- Can I see a classroom, a lab, a Year 1 notebook? The real material says more than the brochure.
And a practical rule: take your child, and let him or her ask at least one question. How he or she reacts in that place is already information.
The real risk: choosing for friends or out of fear
After years of tutoring, the Year 1 cases that reach me with the most suffering almost always have a root of two kinds.
The school was chosen to be with friends. At thirteen it is understandable, but friends change class, section, sometimes school. The path remains. A school chosen only for the people who go there holds up for as long as those people are there.
A track was avoided out of fear of maths. It is the most frequent case. The fear is real, but it is often fear of a method, not of the subject: a child who in lower secondary school “did maths” without understanding what he or she was doing develops aversion, not incapacity. Choosing a school to run away from this fear means carrying it along with you, because maths is almost everywhere, in different forms and doses. If fear is the real reason, the useful question is not “which school has the least maths?” but “how do we get the relationship with maths back on its feet before September?”. On the maths page you will find how I work on this.
The opposite is also a risk: choosing a path just because it “opens more doors”. No school opens every door to someone who attends it unwillingly.
A table to decide
When you reach January, put the information together in a simple scheme. For each school you are considering, answer these questions.
| Question | What to look at |
|---|---|
| Does the advice point in the same direction? | Yes, no, in part: and why |
| Does your child choose it even without friends? | If the answer changes, the motivation is social |
| Is the study load sustainable today? | If not, is there a plan to build the method? |
| Does the school have support for those who struggle? | Help desks, catch-up, tutoring documented |
| Is it reachable every day without getting tired? | Realistic journey times, not ideal ones |
| Is it his or her first choice or the least risky choice? | The second is almost always dictated by fear |
You don’t need a score. You need to see on which row the choice wobbles.
The dates, and what we don’t yet know
Enrolment is done online on Unica. The typical window runs from the second half of January to the second half of February. For 2026/27 they had been set from 13 January to 14 February 2026, with an extension to 21 February. The dates for the 2027/28 school year are not yet known: the Ministry announces them with a circular, and it is not worth organising around a guessed date. Think in terms of “the second half of January” and check the official circular as soon as it comes out.
One last thing that removes anxiety: getting it wrong is not final. In the first two years you can change track by 31 January without supplementary exams: I talk about it in changing track in the first two years. It is not an invitation to choose lightly, but knowing that a way out exists lets you decide with less panic.
What I would do, from now to January
- October-November: talk to your child, without yet proposing a school. Ask what he or she likes doing in free time and what he or she can’t stand about studying.
- November-January: go to two or three open days, with the questions above.
- December: when the advice arrives, read it as described and book a meeting with the teachers if anything is unclear.
- January: fill in the table, decide with your child, and only then enrol.
If in the meantime you see that maths or study method is the fragile point, don’t wait for September: three months of targeted work between January and June change a lot the way a child arrives in Year 1 of upper secondary school.
If you’d like an opinion on your child’s case
If the advice leaves you with doubts, or if the choice turns on maths, write to me from the contact page: we do a free introductory call, in which I look together with you at his or her study method and what is worth building before September. No commitment, and no pressure to choose one school over another.
