On Wednesday 3 December 2025, the Eduscopio ranking, curated by the Agnelli Foundation working group, published the ranking of the best high schools in Italy. The ranking, now in its twelfth edition, reports updated data regarding secondary schools (scientific, classical, human sciences, linguistic, artistic high schools and technical, economic and technological institutes), evaluating which institutes best prepare children for university studies or for work after high school diploma. Eduscopio’s work is also useful for helping families and students in choosing their study path at the end of middle school.
To draw up the ranking, Eduscopio analyzed the data of 1,355,000 graduates from 8,150 Italian schools for the 2019/20, 2020/21 and 2021/22 school years. Specifically, the ability of high schools to prepare and guide students for university studies was assessed. For technical and professional institutes, Eduscopio also assessed the ability to prepare students for entry into the world of work.
Which are the best high schools and technical institutes in Italy: a scientific one from Veneto in first position
The best Italian secondary school is the Giovanni Battista Ferrari high school of applied sciences in Este (Padua), with a score of 94.5 (weighted average between the exam marks obtained by graduates in the first year of university and the credits). An exceptional scientist, because Latin is not studied here: in its place there is computer science, an increasingly essential subject for the present and the future. Then we find another scientific high school, the Juvenal Ancina of Fossano (Cuneo) and the Giorgio Dal Piaz of Feltre (Belluno).
If we instead consider the big cities, in Milan it is the Berchet to head over all the classical high schools (although the best classical one in Lombardy is the Marie Curie of Medain Brianza), and among scientists he is the Time the one with the best score. The linguistic winner is Manzoni, while the leading artistic institutes remain the equal Sacro Cuore and Ursoline. For technicians, here too Manzoni dominates in the economic direction, and Cattaneo in the technological one. Among the professional institutes, the Amerigo Vespucci, the Carlo Porta and the Gianni Brera stand out.
In Rome, however, which beats Milan in terms of scores, the Visconti classical high school and the Righi scientific high school are in the lead, both with a better score than the two winning high schools in the Lombardy capital. The best linguistic high school, however, is Renzo Levi, followed by Amaldi. As for the artistic ones, the equal Saint Ursula remains first, followed by Caravaggio. Among the best technical institutes for economics there isEinstein-Bachelet and for the technological one Carlo Matteucci. Among the professionals, however, there are Amerigo Vespucci and Tor Carbone.
In Turin, however, the classical high school stands out Camillo Benso di Cavourwhich slightly surpassed Gioberti and Alfieri, and among the scientific high schools there is the equal Edoardo Agnelli. Among linguistics, however, Spinelli wins. Excellent results also for technical and professional institutes, with positive post-diploma employment indices: the Arowerfirst among technological technicians, went from an employment rate of 71 to 74%. The professional institute Planaconfirms its good reputation and goes from 57 to 64%.
Further south, in Naples the high school of excellence is the Convitto Vittorio Emanuele IIfollowed by high schools Jacopo Sannazzaro And Piero Calamandrei. Among the Neapolitan state technical institutes, however, the best are Ferdinando Galiani and Sannino-De Cillis, while among the equal ones Modigliani and Enrico De Nicola stand out.
There are many cities, but we conclude by mentioning the high schools of the Emilian and Tuscan capitals: in Bologna, where the Galvani and the CopernicusAnd Florencewhere they win Galileo and the Machiavelli.
The four-year trial yielded inferior results
In this latest edition of Eduscopio, 2,112 students who graduated through the four-year school path introduced by Minister Fedeli in 2017 and started in the 2018-19 school year were also taken into consideration. To evaluate the effectiveness of this experiment, Eduscopio examined the results of the four-year graduates according to its criteria – in particular observing the performances obtained in the first university year – and compared them with those of their peers who followed the traditional five-year path.
According to what emerges from Eduscopio’s analysis, although the final exam scores of four-year graduates are slightly higher than those of five-year graduates (and this could depend on the fact that the students who chose to attend high school in four years were already students who had higher results at the time of middle school, and who were therefore strongly motivated to finish school a year earlier), the university results of four-year graduates “are overall lower than those of five-year graduates both for exam grades than for the number of credits obtained, although less clearly”. Specifically, the results of students from 142 four-year institutions were analyzed (out of a total of approximately 190). Almost 80% of the students obtained a high school diploma, mainly in science; the rest of the graduates are divided between the two macro-addresses of economic technical (12%) and technological (9.5%).
