These pages contain a brief description of the educational services provided by Trieste City Council to offer local children the best possible opportunities for growth and development.

Working for children’s well-being and to give young people the chance to fulfil their potential is a responsibility and a privilege for us. We are fully aware that the future quality of the community and society we live in depends largely on the quality of our investment in the younger generation.

For young children we provide a network of 16 crèches and 3 half-day crèches, 29 nursery schools, 2 children’s centres and 13 recreational centres including 10 school supplement services. Employed in this network are office workers, structural coordinators, recreation officers, teachers, child-minders, assistants and kitchen staff, making a total of 800 people on a permanent basis and about 300 fixed-term contract workers. We plan to increase the current availability of 802 crèche places to bring it in line with the 33% coverage that the public-private partnership will achieve in 2007-8 under the Council of Europe target set in Barcelona in 2002. Also available are 2,645 nursery school places, and we cater for 2,800 children in recreational centres and 958 in supplementary afternoon school. Every day we provide 8,500 meals in the public and private school canteen service.

Numbers aside, important though they are, we feel that our work does not end with the provision of a given volume of services. It has to develop into a continuous exploration of the meaning of education – helping children to grow, to form an identity, to find their place and relate to others.
We like to think that our role recalls the myth of Sisyphus. When he pushed the stone to the top of the mountain and it rolled back down every time, he never despaired but started again.
Educating means many things, and we think among the most relevant is giving a sense to what you do, connecting, learning to combine planning with practical experience and building your future and your community’s future.
It also means learning, starting from yourself and your own experience to make a critical assessment of your behaviour, being open to novelty and change. The biggest danger for an educator (and others) is repeating certain practices simply out of habit, forgetting the real reasons behind them. We like to bear that in mind as a warning and a method of work for ourselves and our public commitment to our end-users, young and not so young.
 

Enrico Conte
Director, Department of Education,
University and Research