PThe more nurseries there are, the more likely mothers are to be able to work. Yet, at the start of the nursery school enrollments for spring 2024-25 which opened today in Milan (and in many other municipalities in Italy), the data portrays another reality: the share of places available in the 0-3 age group is only 28%. The European target would be 33%.
Nursery schools, registrations open. With few insufficient
Second the latest Istat Report, in the two-year period 2021/22, 13,518 nurseries and supplementary early childhood services were activewith an availability of 350,000 seats. Due to the decline in births, underlines the note from the Institute of Statistics, the gap between children and places available in nursery schools is gradually reducing: attendance is approaching European target already set for 2010 (33%) but the distance remains large compared to target for 2030 (45%).
After the pandemic, the supply has increased (+1,780 places became available) but membership requests are largely unsatisfied, especially in the South.
The government’s objective is create 264,480 new jobs between nurseries and nursery schools by 2025. To do this, it was announced in the Budget theincrease to 150-180 million of the Fund for nursery schools with “the goal of free nursery for all second children”.
Because the Pnrr funds were not used
Yet, despite the PNRR had allocated 4.6 billion euros to build kindergartens throughout Italy and guarantee essential levels of performance, 24% of the municipalities that have presented a project it has not moved on to the implementation phase once the financing has been obtained, according to monitoring by the Court of Auditors.
The reasons? The lack of staff and skills to report, make tenders, participate in tenders.
To be penalizedeven in the presence of nests, they are above all the poorest families. In its Report, Istat reports that “the economically disadvantaged conditions of families in most cases do not lead to priority in accessing public nursery schools, except in cases of serious socio-economic hardship certified by social services”. Income, and a low ISEE, can however play a role in supporting the monthly fee, but not all municipalities and structures use the same mechanisms. On average, in 2021 the Municipalities received 1,719 euros from families per child enrolled in municipal structures.
The repercussions on mothers’ lives
The lack of nursery schools it is also and above all reflected on the lives of mothersas underlined by European recommendation of 2022 on early childhood education and care: “Care responsibilities for children, particularly very young ones, constitute a obstacle significant to female participation in the labor market” we read in the text.
“In 2021 the Labor Force Survey revealed that 27.9% of women not belonging to the working population declared that the main reason why she didn’t look for work was the need to look after children or adults in need of assistance, compared to 8% of men only”.
At the same time, we always read in the text, “the employment rate of people with children under the age of 6 was 90.1% for men compared to 67.2% for women. Unpaid care responsibilities prevent around 7.7 million women in Europe from participating in the labor market, compared to 450,000 men only. Even the disproportionate share of care work that women hire is a major root cause of the gender pay gap.”
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