By ELISABETTA POVOLEDO
ROME — Luisa Ribolzi, an expert on education in Italy, likened a teaching job at a public school when the economy is bad to “a ship to jump on for everyone who is swimming in the sea.”
Now imagine seeing that ship after a 13-year absence.
When Italy held examinations to fill teaching positions in its public schools last week for the first time since 1999, it set off something of a nationwide frenzy among the country’s despairing, underemployed and unemployed educators. More than 321,000 people applied to take the tests, pursuing just 11,500 job openings.
The ratio said as much about the dim job prospects in Italy, where the unemployment rate is over 11 percent generally and nearly 14 percent for people ages 24 to 35, as it did about the rigidities and territorial mind-set of a public education system that has been dented for years by hiring freezes and budget cuts.
The exam is supposed to be held every three years, but the Education Ministry put it off repeatedly to save money, some critics say. In that time it filled vacancies with temporary hires, making aspiring teachers and unions furious.
Ministry officials say that this year’s exam is intended to right past wrongs and to introduce a new generation of teachers to a work force whose average age is now 50, one of the highest in Europe, after freezing out young applicants for so long. But it was a sign of how widely the country’s economic pain has spread that the average age of candidates taking the test this year was over 38.
Critics of the current system, with its distinction between permanent teachers and temporary hires working precariously for lower wages on contracts of a year or less, say it has become unworkable.
“It essentially kills young people, who are kept on a leash year after year,” said Marco Paolo Nigi, secretary general of the national teachers’ union, Snals-Confsal. “It’s shameful. And it’s a system we’re trying to change.”
The teaching exam last week, though it opened the way for prequalified job seekers to become teachers, became an occasion for new scrutiny of an education and hiring system that many, like Mr. Nigi, say is in need of revamping.
The test itself, the first to be administered on computers, is meant to measure logic, reading comprehension, and math and linguistic abilities. Questions included “What is a touch screen?” and choosing between “would” and “could” on the portion covering English language skills.
Some critics said the exam was a poor hiring tool because it could not measure attributes like a passion for learning and a love of children that are essential in a good teacher.
“There are better ways to determine merit,” said Romina De Cesaris, 37, a teacher of history and philosophy in Pescara, on the Adriatic coast, who has been working for 10 years on temporary contracts. “This mega-quiz is offensive for those of us who have teaching backgrounds. You can pass a quiz and still not have the didactic competence to teach students.”
While Italy’s teacher-to-student ratio is among the highest in Europe, it does not necessarily translate into better education, according to Andreas Schleicher, who advises the head of the 34-country Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on education matters.
“In terms of student performance, Italy is below the O.E.C.D. norm,” he said. “You have a large number of teachers, but they are poorly paid and have relatively low levels of training. Other systems prioritize the quality of teachers over the size of the classes.”
More than 260,000 candidates sat down to take the test last Monday and Tuesday, trying to answer 50 questions in 50 minutes. Thirty-five correct answers were required to pass and move on to the next phase in the lengthy hiring process; only about 34 percent of those taking the test passed.
Typical among those trying their hand was Valentina, 34, who would give only her first name out of concern for her privacy. She has been practicing law in Rome for the past eight years, but she has not managed to get a full-time job at a law firm. So she dusted off a high school certificate that allowed her to teach primary school to qualify to take the state test and perhaps change careers.
“Maybe this will work,” she said doubtfully as she waited at the gate of a high school in a middle-class neighborhood of Rome.
After the test last week, the next steps are written and oral exams early next year. If she gets through those, Valentina would enter the line for one of 118 nursery school teaching posts open in and around Rome, which pay about 1,200 euros (about $1,580) a month. “How sad,” she said of her overall employment prospects.
Competitions are increasingly rare as Italy’s public service shrinks though cutbacks, so the examination last week drew notable media attention.
“Because there is no regularity in the recruitment of teachers, a selection that in other countries takes place in the normal order of things in Italy assumes a ritual character,” said Ms. Ribolzi, who is vice president of the National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes.
Complicating matters in the schools have been repeated budget cuts and several abortive attempts to improve teaching standards.
The Italian job market is so poor, and so infrequently open to competition, that there is “an avalanche of applications for every competition that arises, regardless of whether it is in the private or public sector,” said Arnaldo Agostini, editor in chief of Lavoro Facile, a magazine that lists job openings.
Many critics of the Education Ministry protested its holding the test for new applicants while thousands of qualified teachers were already languishing on lists of eligible candidates.
Massimo Gargiulo, a spokesman for the Schools of Rome Committee, one of several groups working on behalf of teachers on temporary contracts, said, “The education system in Italy has had no overall planning.”
Mr. Gargiulo said that there were already about 200,000 fully qualified teachers waiting to be hired, even before the exam last week. (The Education Ministry was unable to provide official statistics.)
“Right now, I have 50 people ahead of me to teach Greek in Rome, but the test will put tens of thousands of other contenders in the ranking,” Mr. Gargiulo said. “It’s not a competition, it’s a lottery.”
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