Italy

I.I.S.S.   “OSCAR  ROMERO”    

RIVOLI      ( TORINO )

Our school Oscar Romero  was named after the Archbishop who was killed in San Salvador in 1980.

It is a state school located in Rivoli, a medieval town about 16 Kms from Turin which is the main city in Piedmont.

Two different secondary schools, Liceum Darwin and ours, are located in the same imposing building,  which used to be a Seminary, on top of a hill not far from the Castle of Rivoli.

Nowadays the Castle, which belonged to the Royal Family of Savoy, sold to the municipality of Rivoli in 1883, is a famous Museum of Contemporary Art, well known all over Europe.

Our building now houses a Youth Hostel on one side. It was opened just before  the 2006 Winter Olympics and some students of our school collaborated to the official opening celebrations, owing to an agreement with the local authorities.

             

There is a lovely park surrounding the school and the view from the classrooms is really impressive. On a clear day, you can see the hills surrounding Turin on the east and the snow capped Alps, stretching out in a semi-circle in the west.

We are about 80 kms from the French border, the French area of “ La Haute Savoy”. In our region there are still some people who speak the original language of the place, “ Piedmontese ” one of the  minor languages recognised by the European Union.

Oscar Romero has about 800 pupils and 100 teachers. There are four distinct courses lasting five years and our students specialize in accountancy, computer studies, foreign languages and international relations.

English is studied by all the students together with another foreign language which can be German, French or Spanish. The students of the international relation courses study three languages in their last three years.

Nearly all classes have been involves in international exchange programmes with different schools abroad in Germany, France, England and Turkey.

Lessons start at 8.00 am and usually finish at 2.00 pm. Some classes have lessons also in the afternoon once a week but we never go to school on Saturdays, as the families decided this way few years ago.

The school is always open most afternoons for extra activities like the theatre group, the dance  and music groups and for sport activities.

There is also the possibility to do extra remedial work for students in difficulty who can be helped by their own teachers or different ones, as they prefer.

At the end of any school year there are different courses for the students who have not obtained sufficient evaluations so that they can make up and improve their preparations for the following year.

Bit by bit, in the latest years we have worked giving particular attention to students with physical or learning  problems, trying to make the school a better place for them so that they could feel looked after. As a consequence, we have had more and more subscriptions.