Technical institutes become “technological high schools”, vocational institutes “professional high schools”. This is provided for in the decree-law approved on 24 September 2026 by the Council of Ministers, together with the revision of the number of hours of technicians and other measures for the technological-professional supply chain. The official statement from Palazzo Chigi puts in black and white an idea that the minister Giuseppe Valditara has been anticipating for weeks: overcoming the nominal distinction between high schools, technical and professional ones.
The declared motivation is the equal dignity of the routes. On September 11th Valditara explained it like this: they should all be called high schools because, although they maintain different teachings, they all have the same dignity. It is a topic that deserves to be taken seriously, not dismissed with a joke: the objective could be to broaden the very meaning of the word “high school”, to the point of making it the common name for humanistic, scientific, technological and professional paths. Not a prestige loan, therefore, but an attempt to rewrite its meaning.
Words can change meaning, of course. It happens all the time. But to construct this new common name, the Government chose the word which, until yesterday, indicated only one family of schools: the one perceived as the most prestigious. The technician moves towards high school. The professional moves towards high school. The high school remains exactly where it was. No one, to meet halfway, has proposed renaming the classic “humanistic institute”.
The prestige of the routes does not begin on the license plate
The fact that there is stratification between the different courses does not mean that every family reasons in the same way, nor that high school is automatically considered “the best” by everyone. But the most recent data tell of school choices that continue to be distributed very differently depending on family background.
According to the Censis-Iride survey published on 8 September 2026, for the 2026/2027 school year, 55.9% of students chose a high school, 30.8% a technical institute and 13.3% a professional one. The data on the parents’ educational qualifications is even more telling: among the high school students interviewed, 48.3% have at least one parent with a degree or another tertiary qualification; in technical institutes the share drops to 25.8%, in professional ones to 25.5%. Censis speaks, prudently, of an association with the level of family education, not of an automatic cause and effect relationship. But three such different school populations do not all come from the same starting point.
It is precisely on this ground that the Government’s bet begins to resemble a leap into the void. If “high school” really stopped identifying the most academic path and became a common name, it could reduce at least part of the stigma on other courses.
But if almost half of the students follow the guidance advice and the different paths continue to welcome children with such different family backgrounds, the new sign is entrusted with a rather ambitious job: changing an image built long before entering high school.
The “solid cultural base” of technicians was not born this week
Here I have to play the part of the aunt who takes out the old photo album to prove that “I told you so”. Presidential Decree 88 of 2010 already speaks of a “solid cultural basis of a scientific and technological nature” for technicians. Legislative decree 61 of 2017 calls professionals “territorial schools of innovation” which, between us, is even more elegant than “high school”.
And the formula of “equal dignity”? It already appears in Legislative Decree 226 of 2005, more than twenty years ago, referring to high school and professional education and training courses. That law speaks of the IeFP of regional competence, which does not coincide with the state professional institutes. The principle, however, was already written: different paths must not occupy different steps on the ladder of educational dignity.
We had already encountered the “technological high school”.
Legislative Decree 226 of 2005 already provided for a “technological high school”, with mechanical-mechatronic, electronic, IT, chemical and construction courses: practically the ancestor of what is being rebuilt today. In 2007, Parliament changed course: law 40 canceled those references and gave technicians and professionals their autonomous identity back.
So the technicians didn’t receive the culture, the one written in black and white in the Official Journal, as a gift with the new name. They already had it. The problem, evidently, did not end on paper: it lived, and still lives, also in the social hierarchy built around those schools.
Not because history always repeats itself in the same way (the two reforms are not identical), but because Italian schools have already tried to arrange technical education within the word “lyceum”, and at a certain point chose to separate it again. It is worth remembering this before assigning to 2026 an idea that the legislator had already put down on paper and then set aside when the majority of today’s students had not yet been born.
The budget figures
The change of name is not the only measure of the decree, which also affects the hours of technicians and the technological-professional chain. Regarding the figures, however, it is best to keep the years separate: for 2026 the Campus Fund already had 5 million at its disposal, to which the 2025 budget law had added another 15; the new decree provides for another 10 million for 2027.
The FLC CGIL contested the idea of focusing the relaunch on the label, asking that priority return to the teaching hours cut in the reorganization of technicians, bringing the discussion exactly where the name alone does not reach: what really happens inside those schools? And there is one last institutional detail, often left on the sidelines: it is a decree-law, and as such it will have to be converted by Parliament within sixty days of publication, as required by article 77 of the Constitution. In short, the text can still change. And the Italian school, when it comes to this name, has already shown that it knows how to rethink it.
The proof will come after the name change
The Government’s hypothesis is clear: broaden the meaning of “high school” to the point of transforming it into a common denomination, progressively removing the hierarchical value it has today. The objection is equally concrete: to do so, the very word that already possesses that prestige was chosen.
Measuring the effect of the reform will be much less elegant data than a new sign: who will choose those paths next year, what advice students will receive at the end of middle school, how the social composition of those enrolled will change and what they will really find inside those schools. For now we know that technicians and professionals should change their names. The social hierarchy of the Italian school, however, has not yet submitted an application to the registry office.
