The provision of nursery and early childhood services shows signs of numerical expansion. The places available in public and private nursery schools rose to 378,500 in the 2023/2024 educational year, with an increase of 3.4% compared to the previous year: Italy is thus only one percentage point away from the historic objective of 33% implemented with legislative decree 65/2017.
However, if we consider the European parameters set by the EU for 2030, the work to be done remains immense: the coverage required to satisfy the demand for early childhood will have to reach at least 45%. Furthermore, the improvement data must be read within the framework of the demographic winter, which shows the progress of the national indicator as a pure optical distortion.
The birth rate
What pushes the percentage of coverage upwards is not only the increase in services activated in the area, which also occurred, but the constant demographic decline. Istat data highlights how the number of residents in the 0-2 year age group has been decreasing for several years: from 400,000 births in 2021 it fell to 379,890 in 2023, up to around 370,000 in 2024. A figure dramatically distant from the over 576,000 births in 2008.
Given the approximately 12,000 additional physical places created in the last year, the contraction of the number of small beneficiaries contributes significantly to the formal improvement of the indicator. In essence, the gap in inequality appears less wide only because there are fewer children.
Two countries, two services
The supply trend is marked by deep geographical rifts. As analyzed by Openpolis with Con i Bambini, there are 13 Regions that have exceeded the 33% threshold:
- Umbria (48.4%);
- Emilia-Romagna (44.2%);
- Valle d’Aosta (43.8%);
- Tuscany (42.1%);
- Friuli-Venezia Giulia (40.8%);
- Lazio (39.8%);
- Sardinia (39.5%);
- Lombardy (38.9%);
- Trentino-Alto Adige (38.2%);
- Liguria (36.5%);
- Piedmont (35.4%);
- Veneto (34.8%);
- Marche (33.6%).
The South remains significantly behind: Campania records a rate of 15.4%, Sicily 15.5% and Calabria 17.2%.
Alongside the chronic difference between North and South, a second structural fracture emerges, which separates large urban centers from inland and mountain areas:
- in the hub municipalities availability reaches an average of 38.7%, with peaks above 60% in capitals such as Nuoro, Sassari, Siena and Ferrara;
- in the surrounding municipalities (the hinterlands of large agglomerations) the offer drops to 29%, in the face of an increase in the resident population;
- in internal areas the average drops to 24.5%, reducing to 20.4% in the outermost municipalities (more than an hour away from essential services).
Particularly in mountain areas, which constitute over 35% of the national surface area and where average incomes are lower than the regional average, the lack of educational infrastructure represents one of the main factors of depopulation for young families, which is why the revision of the criteria for accessing funds for mountain communities has been contested.
The suburbs of big cities
A separate reasoning concerns the large metropolises which, although reaching or close to the European targets at an aggregate level, hide profound internal distortions between the center and the peripheries. The regional data from Lazio and Lombardy show excellent overall averages, but the actual location of positions creates access short circuits for workers.
In Rome, for example, the nurseries in the historic center often have empty places due to the depopulation and touristification of the residential fabric, while the demand from families has concentrated exponentially in the peripheral neighborhoods and along the Grande Raccordo Anulare. Added to this is the rigidity of the residence criteria, which excludes a large part of commuter workers
