Compiti: daily homework, oral interrogazioni, the three-month summer and the compiti delle vacanze, and what Indian parents should actually do

Compiti delle vacanze help is the search that arrives in July, when an Indian family in Italy discovers that the summer holiday is three months long and comes with a workbook. It is the last chapter of a story that begins in September: Italian schools give homework, real homework, from the first week of classe 1, and they keep giving it through a three-month summer. For a family arriving from India this is the one part of the Italian system that feels like home, and it hides two traps: doing more of what the school already does, and missing what the school does not do at all. This post explains how the homework works, the oral test that comes with it in the scuola media, the Italian ways of getting help, the summer, and the routine we recommend.

Homework, year by year

In classe 1 and 2 it is reading aloud in Italian, a few lines of writing, and a page of maths, twenty to forty minutes. From classe 3 the studying begins: history, geography and science are learned by reading the page and repeating it (studiare la pagina), and the child is expected to be able to tell the teacher what it said. By classe 5 an hour a day is normal, more at the weekend, which is also a homework day. In the scuola media each professore sets their own, so the total is commonly two hours on a school day and more before a verifica (a written test) or an interrogazione, plus the pages of a book to read. Tempo pieno children, home at 16:30, do the same homework in less evening.

All of it is written in the child's diario and, in almost every school now, posted in the registro elettronico, the online register the family logs into: homework by subject and date, test marks as they are given, absences to justify, notes from teachers, the timetable, the report. Set the app to notify you. Between the two reports a year, the register is the only place the school tells you how the child is doing, and the marks appear there within days of a test.

The interrogazione

From prima media the oral test becomes the centre of Italian assessment and it is the thing an Indian child has never met. The teacher calls a name, the child stands or sits at the desk, and answers questions on the pages studied, for five to fifteen minutes, in front of the class, and receives a mark out of 10 that counts as much as a written test. Sometimes it is announced; often it is not (interrogazione a sorpresa), and the child is expected to be ready every day for the subject on the timetable. In maths it may be a problem at the blackboard.

Indian children are prepared for written tests and find the first interrogazioni hard, not because they do not know the material but because they have never said it aloud with an adult listening. The preparation is to change the homework from reading to speaking: the child studies the page and then tells it to a parent, in Italian or, in the first year, in whichever language they have, and the parent asks one question. Within a term most Indian children are good at interrogazioni, because the habit of studying the whole page, which the Italian school builds, is the habit the oral rewards. The subject where it matters most for the future is maths, because the terza media oral and the whole of the liceo run on it.

How Italian families get help

Two words to know. Doposcuola is after-school homework help, run by the comune, a parish, a cooperative or a private centre, in a group, cheap or free, and used heavily by working families; the child does the compiti with an adult in the room and comes home with them done. It is good for the Italian subjects and for a family whose Italian is not strong enough to help with history and geography. It does not teach; it supervises. Ripetizioni are private lessons, one-to-one, at €15 to €35 an hour for the primaria and media and more for the superiori, usually from a university student or a teacher, in Italian, and usually to rescue a subject rather than to stretch it. Italian families buy ripetizioni when the mark drops below 6; Indian families want the mark to go from 7 to 9 and the English to exist, which is a different job.

The three-month summer

School ends in the first or second week of June and begins again around the second week of September. Twelve to fourteen weeks. Italian families fill it with grandparents, the sea, the mountains, the centro estivo (summer camp, by the week, run by the comune or privately), and the compiti delle vacanze.

For the primaria the compiti delle vacanze are usually a printed summer workbook chosen by the maestre, one for Italian and one for maths or a combined one, about a hundred pages of revision, with the instruction to do a little every day. Some teachers add reading and a diary. For the scuola media each professore leaves a list: exercises from the textbook, two or three books to read with a summary, sometimes a project, and in the summer before terza media, revision for the exam year. Whether it is checked in September depends on the teacher; some collect it, some test on it, some never mention it. Do it anyway, because the child who arrives in September having done nothing for twelve weeks has lost a term, and in Italy the first verifiche come within three weeks.

The compiti delle vacanze are revision. They do not move a child forward, and for a child who is ahead they are quick. The three months are the largest block of free learning time in the year, more than the whole of the Dutch or British summer, and they are the time to do what the Italian school does not do. This is where an Indian family's instincts are right and the Italian summer is generous.

The routine we recommend

On school days, keep it short and do not double up.

• Let the compiti be the compiti. An hour in the primaria, two in the media, done at the same time every day, with the interrogazione subjects said aloud rather than read. Use a doposcuola if the Italian subjects are beyond the family's Italian.
• Add twenty minutes of what the school does not give, four days a week: maths in English or Hindi a term ahead of the class, in the Italian layout so that it also makes the compiti quicker, and English as a subject, reading and writing, not the school's hour a week.
• Read Italian aloud every day in the first two years, ten minutes, the child to you. It is the fastest route through the problemi and the studying.

In the summer, invert it.

• Weeks 1 to 3 (June): the compiti delle vacanze, a page a day, done in the mornings and finished. Read the assigned books early.
• Weeks 4 to 10 (July and August): two structured sessions a week of maths and English in English or Hindi, an hour each, working the next year's Italian syllabus a term ahead, and for a child going into seconda or terza media, the terza media question types. Holidays interrupt; the sessions move rather than stop.
• Weeks 11 to 13 (September): a second pass through the summer workbook's harder pages, the Italian reading picked up again, and the timetable back by the second week.

A child who does this arrives in September ahead of the class in maths and with English the Italian school will not touch, having done less total work than a child who was made to do worksheets all summer. What the Italian maths syllabus asks each year, so that "a term ahead" has a shape, is in Italian school maths class by class. And for a family that has just arrived from the Netherlands, where homework barely exists, the difference between the two systems is the whole of our post on the Dutch tienminutengesprek and homework; the Italian school is the other extreme, and the answer at home is the same in both: add the stretch, not the volume.

What we do

Our classes for children in Italian schools are built around the Italian year: on school days, maths a term ahead in English, Hindi or Punjabi, in the Italian layout, with the words, so that the compiti get faster; English as a real subject; and in summer, a plan that takes the child from the compiti delle vacanze in June to a term's head start by September, with the terza media in view from seconda media. We do not do the child's homework and we do not teach Italian, and we say so. Bring the registro login and the summer workbook to the free demo, and we will show you what to keep, what to skip and what to add.

Questions parents ask

See how we teach this, 1-on-1 online →