PRIMARY SCHOOL
In Italy Primary school became compulsory back in 1859, soon after the unification of the country. It was introduced by the Minister of Education of the time Gabrio Casati and is commonly referred to as the Casati Act. Primary education became compulsory for two years from age 6 (then called lower primary education). An additional two years (upper primary) were optional and free of charge.
The Ministers of Education – from 1877 to1923 – introduced changes in Primary Education:
• An extra year was added to lower primary education, which still began at age 6;
• Upper primary education consisted in 2 more years.
Both levels were gratuitous.
In 1923 the new Minister of Education Giovanni Gentile introduced a new Education Reform into the country, the Gentile Reform.
Nowadays Primary school lasts five years and is for children aged 6 - 11. Classes are usually made up of no more than 25 and no fewer than 10 students. However, classes with special learning needs students may have even fewer. Multi-classes and/or multi-form, grouping students from different classes, cannot have fewer than 6 or more than 12 pupils. Multi-class classes were quite common until not long ago, above all in hilly, mountainous or rural areas.
School subjects are Italian, English, maths, science, history, geography, social studies, education to art, sound and music, P.E. and I.C.T. Religion education is the only optional subject, and each family decides whether or not to include it in the curriculum. In addition to these subjects, class and/or group-tailored ‘life-skills’ lessons and activities focus on citizenship enhancement, traffic safety awareness, environmental studies, health education, alimentary education and affective education.
At the end of class 5, students take the primary school leaving examinations, which allow them to move on to the second stage of compulsory education, which is the lower secondary school.

San Calogero Primary School
The building currently housing the primary school was erected in 1961. Before then, primary teaching was conducted in private houses. The recently renovated building is on four floors:
• the mezzanine floor houses 1 classroom;
• the ground floor houses 8 classrooms;
• the basement is used as a sports area;
• the first floor houses 7 classrooms;
• the second floor houses 3 classrooms.
Before being merged with the lower secondary and pre-primary one in the year 2000, the primary school was part of the Limbadi, Mileto and Rombiolo teaching discricts.
Previous to the 2003 Moratti Reform, primary teaching used to be conducted over 6 days a week, with two afternoons.
As concerns the extra-curricular activities offered at the primary school, one should emphasize that photography and ICT were introduced into teaching long before being done so in other schools. Other project activities and initiatives have focused on sport, drama, singing, painting, environmental studies, and ceramics.