The government responded to the Middle School Teaching Staff with a sentence that closes the debate on procedure: “Signed agreements are binding on all parties.” On SportinFiera, a Framework Agreement existed, defined — as the State Congress (Congresso di Stato) recalls — together with school management and teachers’ representatives.
The Agreement also provides a specific venue for resolving disputes: the National Sports Table (Tavolo nazionale dello sport).
At this point, it is no longer a question of jurisdiction. It is time to stand by the kids and the sports clubs, and not let a decision made unilaterally close the match.
For weeks, the talk has been about a failure of dialogue.
The government’s statement adds the detail that changes the picture: the venue for dialogue already existed.
It didn’t need to be invented — it needed to be used. Instead, the decision to bring only the first-year students to the fair came as a resolution from the Teaching Staff, announced in June and confirmed in September.
It held firm despite an appeal from CONS (the National Olympic Committee), a letter from twenty-two federations, and the disappointment expressed by two Secretaries of State.
In recent days, the teachers have asserted their own autonomy.
Yet no one, in any official setting, had ever questioned it. CONS said it respected that autonomy, the federations said they had no wish to oppose the school, and the Secretary of State for Education said it was not his place to weigh in on the substance.
The government now responds that autonomy exists to enrich the educational offering, not to override a signed agreement.
Then there is the substance of the matter, which counts most of all.
Second and third year of middle school mean thirteen and fourteen years old: the age bracket in which, the government points out, statistics most often show the risk of dropping out of sport.
It is precisely the age at which a day at the fair, with dozens of disciplines within reach, can make all the difference.
On one side, the kid who stays with a team; on the other, the one who quits. To say those kids have already chosen is to treat their choices as final at the very moment they are most fragile. For the State Congress, physical activity is not an optional add-on to the school calendar. This much shouldn’t even need discussing.
And then there are the sports clubs.
In a country of thirty-four thousand people, every federation survives on a tiny pool of participants.
It survives on volunteer coaches in the evenings and families who bring their children along on weekends. SportinFiera is one of the few occasions when that whole world can present itself to all the kids at once, without having to chase them down one by one.
Twenty-two federations signing an open letter together are not a lobby: they are a sign that, for them, this moment matters. Supporting them means recognizing that grassroots sport does a piece of the educational work that the school cannot do alone — and that it is not in competition with the school.
The government has left the door open, and rightly so.
The Secretariats of Education and Sport say they are ready for a frank discussion with teachers and school management.
Now it is up to the Teaching Staff to make a move.
They need not give up their autonomy — no one wants to take that away.
They must bring their concerns to the venue the Agreement provides for such discussions: the National Sports Table, ahead of the 2027 edition.
If the problem was the numbers — nine hundred kids together — solutions can be found: staggered shifts over the three days, a different programme for the older students.
If the problem was something else, that is where it should be raised.
The school’s autonomy is a value worth defending, and precisely for that reason it cannot become the excuse for backing out of a signed agreement.
This year, six hundred kids saw the fair from the outside. For next year, everyone already knows where they need to sit down to make sure that doesn’t happen again.
