Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

The Ministry of Education, University and Research (M.I.U.R.) has established, since 2007, a socio-educational service called "Spring Sections" which consists of an integrated offer for children aged between 24 and 36 months and is aimed at providing a concrete response to families' demand to implement services dedicated to early childhood.

The Spring Sections can be established exclusively within a nursery school (equal or non-equal) or a nursery and must comply with the following requirements:

• access to the service for children aged between 24 and 36 months who turn two years of age on a date between 1 January and 31 December of the reference school year. For children who turn 24 months of age between 1 September and 31 December, admission to attendance is fixed at the age of two;
• suitability of rooms and spaces from a functional and safety point of view, compliant with regional rules and municipal regulations in force on the subject, and which respond to the different needs of children aged between two and three years, in particular: reception, rest, play, nutrition, personal care, etc.;
• setting up spaces with furnishings, materials, internal and external structures, capable of qualifying the educational environment as a context of life, relationships and learning;
• flexible operating hours responsive to the different needs of users and the quality of service provision, between a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 8 hours per day;
• numerical ratio between educational staff and children not exceeding 1:10 defined, however, taking into account the age of the children, the hourly extension of the service, the size of the group and the characteristics of the educational project;
• limited size of the homogeneous age group which can vary between a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 20 children based on the educational and organizational model adopted. The minimum number of children can be waived up to n. 5 units for educational institutions located in specific territorial areas such as, for example, mountain municipalities, small islands and small municipalities belonging to communities lacking educational structures for early childhood;
• preparation of a consultancy, technical assistance, pedagogical coordination, monitoring and evaluation program that guarantees the complete reliability from an educational point of view of the new service launched;
• use of professionally suitable educational staff, for the specific age group of children, with particular attention to the support of children with disabilities included in the section, in compliance with the provisions of the National Framework Agreement of 1 August 2013;
• specificity of the educational project in which educational continuity with the relevant educational structures dedicated to children from 0 to 6 years old is highlighted and also through forms of availability for staff training.

Possession of the aforementioned requirements is an essential condition for the authorization to operate the spring sections, for the continuation of their activity and for the consequent disbursement of the public contribution.