Data Card - Ten years of At the School of OpenCohesion: numbers and results

17/11/2022

On 10th November 2022 the 2022-2023 edition of At the School of OpenCohesion (ASOC) kicked off with the introductory webinar. ASOC is the citizenship education path aimed at students who develop digital skills by means of a civic monitoring of projects financed by cohesion policies on the territories. Civic monitoring does not replace administrative monitoring or institutional investment verification mechanisms, but - in the spirit of all the activities connected to the OpenCoesione initiative - promotes collaboration, participation and transparency. At the School of OpenCohesion project has reached its tenth edition this school year: for this reason, on the occasion of International Students' Day, OpenCoesione dedicates a Data Card to "all the numbers" and the results of ASOC dated 17th November.

Since the first edition 2013-2014, about 35 thousands students have been involved in the project, i.e. those who have taken part and animated the activities of one of the 1,618 teams that were involved in the At the School of OpenCohesion. Italian students of upper secondary schools, in large part, but also - starting from the 2020-2021 school year - young people enrolled in lower secondary schools (middle), in addition to European students who have took part, starting from 2019-2020, in the international editions "At the School of OpenCohesion" and most recently in the ASOC ETC Interreg pilot school path. The last format foresees European students' engagement in “twinned” teams with Italian "colleagues" in monitoring projects funded by the CTE (European Territorial Cooperation) Programmes.

In this 2022-2023 school year, 30 middle school teams will be involved for the first time, while 11 will participate in ASOC ETC Interreg.

The majority of the teams that took part in the At the School of OpenCohesion project consist of students enrolled in schools in the South and the two major islands. 71% of the teams are "located" in Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Puglia, Sardinia and Sicily. This percentage reveals a more marked element of interest for the interventions financed by the cohesion policy in these territories, an element which is confirmed by the territorial distribution of the European and national resources allocated to the interventions, which are respectively allocated to the South: for 68% European funds and 80% national funds.
 

The schools involved in the project are 57% higher education institutions in which different typologies coexist (high school, technical and professional). On the other hand, there are relatively few professional institutes, just 46 (2.8%).

The majority of students (over 71%) took part in ASOC within a team made up of a working group involving students enrolled in a given year in only one school class, but it is interesting to note that around one quarter of the teams involved the pupils from different classes to collaborate. Analyzing the distribution of class-teams (classes or groups of classes) in the five years of secondary school attendance, it appears that the majority of students (57.7%) took part in the project while attending the third (31.8%) or fourth year (25.9%), i.e. before of or immediately after the age of eighteen, which in our country marks an important step in relation to the exercise of civil rights, because at the age of 18 it is possible to vote in administrative elections (municipal and regional), in political elections (limited to the renewal of the Chamber of Deputies) and in European elections, and you can run for municipal and regional councils.

 

A further element of interest undoubtedly concerns the choices of the students in relation to the projects subject to civic monitoring: the topics of greatest interest are those related to Culture and tourism (28,33%), the Environment (17,88), Inclusion social and health (12,73%). At the end of the monitoring process, the students highlight their opinion on the project in a report and in a civic monitoring report published on the Monithon platform, according to a scale that goes from "completed and useful" to "completed but ineffective", passing through "blocked" or "ongoing with some problems". It may be interesting, in this regard, to refer to an analysis conducted by the Monithon editorial staff in 2020, which highlights how, in general, most projects obtain an overall positive judgment (60%) even in the presence of some critical projects as judged ineffective (9%), blocked (9,4%), or which are in progress but present some problems (15,7%) of administrative nature or in launching phase or related to some technical problems.

 

The research conducted by Monithon also highlights the ability of students to form relationships with other actors in their territories. Analyzing the interaction between the various Twitter accounts created by the students as part of the project to document the various steps of their work, the more than 5,000 connections created stand out. A relational heritage that is one of the pillars of the project, which has been able to consolidate a lively and constantly updated Community over the years. This is also thanks to the valuable support provided annually by the territorial networks official partners of the ASOC project, such as the Europe Direct Centers, the "Friends of ASOC" associations, the Istat territorial contacts, but also thanks to various Management Authorities of some regions who have often acted as information hubs, connecting various types of actors with each other.

 

In 2022, the publication of the ASOC Stories began, a series of reports that tell the effects of civic monitoring actions on projects and on the territory, measuring them through meetings - after a few years - with students and teachers engaged in civic monitoring. In some cases it was also thanks to them, to the ability to turn the attention of local public opinion on an intervention, if a "blocked" project was concluded.

 

The At the School of OpenCohesion website offers everyone the opportunity to navigate the research of all the ASOC teams (which have completed the entire educational and civic monitoring process (about 75 percent of the total) by consultation of the complete list, in alphabetical order by region and locality, or by selecting each individual edition of the project, with links to the respective blogs.