The right to education during the Italian pandemic. E-learning and inequality before the law

Abstract

Since the beginning of 2020 Italy have tried to give specific and rapid answers to the pandemic crisis, even if with strong compressions and limitations of constitutional fundamental rights, which has led to a huge debate among scholars about: the legislative instruments applied, the kind of legislation used, and on the merit of the measures enacted, having regard to their content and their compatibility with the constitutional principles and provisions, their legitimacy, their proportionality and the (un)fair balancing with the fundamental rights compressed and limited under their effects. Mostly, the crucial balancing work has involved, on one side, the right to health in its individual (private health) and collective dimension (public health) and, on the other side, many other fundamental rights, such as freedom of movement, freedom of meeting, right to work, right to education, and so on. Among all these fundamental rights’ limitation, this essay focuses on those affecting the bundle of legal situations protected under articles 33 and 34 of the Italian Constitution, which refer to the right to education and teaching in primary and secondary school. In particular, the analysis briefly focuses on: the pre-existing problems arising from the relevant legislation and the issue of financial resources (§ 2); the measures approved by the Government in the field of schools as well as on online teaching, during the first and the second wave of pandemic (§ 3), with reference to the inequalities highlighted by the digital and socio-economic divide in the territory, also highlighting the problem of the safety of those who use e-learning platforms (§ 4).