Italy has a problem with teachers. The number of teachers on short-term contracts across pre-school and high-school education has doubled in six years. Of a total of 907,929 teachers in the 2020/2021 school year, one in five had a short-term contract, up from one in nine in 2015. Moreover, recruitment is not keeping pace with schools’ need for teachers, thus leaving hundreds of classroom positions vacant which is affecting the educational progress of students all over Italy.
Since 2012, several governments have tried to fix the school system and one administration introduced an algorithm. In summer 2020, during the Conte Bis government, the former Minister of Education Lucia Azzolina introduced the GPS algorithm for schools, a digitised and automatic procedure that would simplify and improve teacher recruitment. The algorithm rests on two rankings. The first is the Graduatorie Provinciali per le Supplenze (GPS) specifically designed for substitute teachers. The second is the Graduatorie Provinciali a Esaurimento (GAE) which is for teachers holding a teaching qualification. The algorithm evaluates teachers’ CVs and cross-references their preferences for location and class with schools’ vacancies. If there is a match, a provisional assignment is triggered, but the algorithm continues to assess other candidates. If it finds another matching candidate with a higher score, that second candidate moves into the lead. The process continues until the algorithm has assessed all potential matches and selected the best possible candidate for the role.