Community Educational Pacts in Italy: An Interpretation of UNESCO’s New Social Contract for Education?

• In Event: The role of policy in education

Proposal

In its new global report published in 2021, the UNESCO International Commission on the Futures of Education has invited the international community to forge a “new social contract for education”, necessary to repair past injustices and build a more equitable and sustainable planet. This new social contract should involve all education stakeholders and be governed by two foundational principles, namely assuring the right to quality education throughout life, and strengthening education as a common good (International Commission on the Futures of Education 2021).
The idea of a new social contract for education refers to the many experiences of cooperation among communities and education systems around the world. In Italy, these experiences, commonly referred to as Community Educational Pacts, have gained increasing attention in recent years and have been seen as a potential response to the challenges affecting the Italian education landscape, characterized by rising inequality and increasing levels of educational poverty made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic (ISTAT 2021). With regard to this, the Ministry of Education has underlined the crucial role that Community Educational Pacts can play in fostering concrete models of open, cohesive and inclusive schooling supported by the active involvement of citizens and their communities (Ministero dell’Istruzione 2020).

The concept of education as a common good represents a useful frame of reference for reflection on Community Educational Pacts and their implementation. The transition from the concept of public good to that of common good set out in the latest UNESCO report corresponds to a different idea of the role of the State and implies a different relationship among the actors which take part in the social contract. In fact, these arrangements make it possible to initiate processes of effective participation by the various actors present in a community and to increase the availability of the resources present in a given context. They also offer the opportunity to rethink lesson time, teaching methods and practices, school spaces and the model of educational governance itself. These are often long-term operations that require a solid weaving of the components involved, including educational institutions, third sector entities and parent associations (INDIRE 2022). This is particularly relevant since the opening up of the school system to territorial alliances is no longer considered strictly related to the COVID-19 emergency but is seen as a necessary pedagogical response to new social and cultural issues. The goal is to renew the educational pact to establish educating communities which assume greater responsibility in the education endeavour, thus overcoming the utilitarian vision of education intended primarily as an individual or private good (Locatelli 2021).

As a shared social endeavour, education represents an opportunity for individuals to develop their full potential and to contribute to democratic development and the improvement of society. In this regard, cooperation and sharing of responsibilities among the members of any society is the precondition for ensuring more equitable and inclusive education systems.
This paper examines whether Community Educational Pacts can represent concrete opportunities for reimagining education and the school system, thus providing a possible interpretation of the “new social contract for education”. It discusses the extent to which these experiences may be grounded on the concept of education as a common good, which governs UNESCO’s new social contract, and which represents an alternative framework to promote inclusion and innovation within a humanistic approach to education in contrast to an individualistic and utilitarian one.

Methodology and theoretical approach

This paper provides a review of the literature on the concept of the “social contract for education” which has a long history in UNESCO’s tradition and was first conceptualized by Edgar Faure in the 1960s-1970s (Elfert 2018). Fifty years after the publication of the Learning to be Report, this idea has been reconsidered to highlight the relational dimension of each education endeavour (Shafik 2021; Toukan 2022).

It analyses the policies that have been fostered in the Italian context to promote the institutionalization of Community Educational Pacts and critically examines national education policy discourse in order to highlight the underlying ideological and conceptual frameworks. The pedagogical reflection on the principles of subsidiarity and educational co-responsibility is of particular importance in this regard since it underlines the need to rethink the relationship between the different educational agencies in a systemic perspective and with a view to achieving greater cohesion within the educational community. It is also about revisiting the idea of John Dewey whereby schools should be considered as social or civic centres facilitating the interaction and cooperation at the territorial level (Dewey 1902).

The paper reviews the process which has led to the establishment of a National Observatory on Community Educational Pacts by the INDIRE (the National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research), the Italian Ministry of Education’s oldest research organisation. By reviewing the experiments already taking place in different parts of Italy, this research explores the extent to which community pacts can promote structural changes to address the challenges which concern the Italian school system, especially those relating to poor quality education and the increasing number of early school leavers. The analysis identifies such factors and conditions that can either facilitate or hinder the achievement of these initiatives.

Ultimately, this paper presents the theoretical discussion on the notion of education as a common good in comparison to that of public good. While the latter remains faithful to the notion of the nation-state, the former implies a different relationship among the actors involved in Community Educational Pacts. It therefore critically examines whether these experiences can be considered as potential interpretations of the “new social contract for education” called for by UNESCO.

Author

• Rita Locatelli, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore