Anyone know anything about Italian scuole materne?

[redgecko]

DP and I are both British and have been living in Italy for a couple of years now. 2 year old DS currently goes part-time to a local asilo. We have just started to look into pre-school options for when he turns 3. Our preference is to send him to a local scuola materna, although lack of familiarity with the system means I'm close to bottling it and opting for an international pre-school.

Are there any knowledgeable people out there who can tell me a bit about how Italian scuole materne work? I've been onto our local comune website so know a bit about the application process, but would be great to know a bit more about staff to child ratios, hours (is there flexibility to do half days?), general ethos of Italian scuole materne etc. In addition to state scuole materne, we're also looking at private church-run pre-schools (despite being non believers!) as quite a few of our Italian colleagues seem to use these. Would be good to get an idea of how these compare to the state system.

hi there - come over to Little Italy and we should be able to give you some pointers

my son is 5 and our experience of the materna he goes to in Rome has been very positive. He does half days although he had the option to do full days. I think the quality of the materna can depend very much on your region and funding. Where are you based?

Thanks BananaGio. We're in Rome too (San Giovanni area). What are the class sizes like at your son's materna? Do you get much choice in which materna you get allocated, or is it fairly random?

there are 16 in his class and these are mixed ages 3-6. We were able to select a few choices in the area. When the results came throuh my ds wasnt accepted into the one he ended up in as we didnt have enough points, he was allocated a place in one quite far away which upset me as I really wanted him going to school locally. We had a phone call in the summer saying a space had come up at his local one though so ended up there.

Checking in again after a lengthy holiday! Thanks for the info in your last post BananaGio. Just started looking round a few schools, so starting to get a better idea of what's out there.