Didacta Italy – Italian Minister of Education Patrizio Bianchi to Visit the Fair Tomorrow Morning (Saturday)

Exhibitions

Florence, 20th May 2022. The 5th edition of DIDACTA ITALY has started at the Fortezza da Basso. Open until Sunday, 22nd May, it will feature over 200 exhibitors and 250 educational events.

“DIDACTA ITALY FAIR, which this year is dedicated to Maria Montessori to commemorate the 70th anniversary of her passing – said President of Firenze Fiera Lorenzo Becattini during the opening ceremony – is growing and increasingly becoming greater and more extraordinary thanks to a well-established partnership between Italy and Germany and to the teamwork of Firenze Fiera, Indire, the Italian Ministry of Education and all the institutional and cultural realities of this sector. I would like to take this opportunity to officially announce that DIDACTA ITALY will have a sort of spin-off in Sicily, taking place from 20th to 22nd October 2022”. 

“We must remember that the school sector suffered the weight and sacrifice of the pandemic more than any other”, added Mayor of Florence Dario Nardella. “To this extent, I would like to remember the engagement of our Administration and of the Metropolitan City of Florence in favour of education. We had an investment package of 100 million Euros thanks to the PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan) to deeply renew all the school-educational infrastructure in our country. We must make Florence and Italy a great place to be, importing talents from all over the world. And to do so, we also need events like this one”.

“Didacta is a Fair honouring Florence and Tuscany and acquiring a national as well as an international profile. As Region of Tuscany, we rely a lot on school building programmes. In February, we anticipated the social cohesion fund, and 50% of the 108 million euros received by Tuscany was devoted to school. Didacta is all this – debating on these themes, having opportunities to meet. We are committed to give an increasingly international feel to this Fair”, commented President of the Regional Government of Tuscany Eugenio Giani.

“We all have seen that in these last years, the world of education has changed radically. Schools are increasingly becoming more virtual, said Theodor Niehaus, President of Didacta Germany. “Didacta is an opportunity to talk about all this. We must prepare the younger generations for the job market and for future expertise. This is a key element for the education industry”.

“Didacta is back after two and a half years. During this time, the working world has changed, along with the world of school, our sociality, and the economy”, stated Giuseppe Salvini, Secretary General of the Chamber of Commerce of Florence. “This job market is restarting although there is always the paradox of 41% of professional figures which are difficult to find. This percentage becos 70% for digitally connected profiles, 60% for workers specialized in the textile, fashion, clothing, and shoes sectors, and 50% for health technicians. Therefore, we need moments of discussion like this one, where school is confronted with the job market, and where we can also offer career guidance. At the Chamber of Commerce, Casa delle Imprese & Casa dell’Economia, we believe that an event like Didacta is crucial to make the point on school, innovation, but also on the intersection and alignment of young people, the world of school, the expertise and present and future work”.

Tomorrow (Saturday), at 10:00, inside the Sala della Scherma, a convention named “STATES-GENERAL OF EDUCATION – I.T.S., THE NEW HIGHER TECHNICAL EDUCATION AND THE JOB MARKET” will take place, with the participation of Italian Minister of Education Patrizio Bianchi. Maria Stella Gelmini, Minister of the Regional Affairs and Autonomies, is also expected to attend the event. Among the speakers, the President of the 7th Culture and Education Committee of the Italian Senate, Riccardo Nencini, and Cristina Giachi, President of the Regional Educational Committee of the Region of Tuscany. Among the other speeches, the ones by Rosa Maria Di Giorgi, Gabriele Toccafondi and Valentina Aprea, members of the 7th Education Committee of the Chamber of Deputies, and Guido Torrielli, President of the Association Rete Fondazioni ITS Italia.

Among the other events on schedule tomorrow (Saturday), a workshop will take place at 13:00 in the Humanities Department, named “The Future Has an Ancient Heart”, during which a short talk illustrate the experience acquired in a school in the outskirts of Milan, thanks to the inspiration and the support received by the participation in national networks, in particular Avanguardie Educative, Biblòh! and Jazz Mood Schools (JMS): transforming learning environments, bringing libraries to the core of the educational experience as multifunctional spaces open to the territory, and music inside school libraries as an integrated resource with different areas of formative action (linguistic, artistic, relational, and civic).