We always move on our territory: to go to school, to go to a gym, a disco or to meet friends. We go on holiday in our country or abroad, we can change our house in the same town, near it or we can go to live very far from it, and for several reasons. These are the topics that Italian students tried to study with a the survey about the movements of the school staff, students and their families. They showed the main results with a PowerPoint presentation to the other partner schools during the meeting in Greece in 2007 and Finland in 2008 and to the other students of their school and to the local authorities during a Comenius Day on 9/5/2008. On that occasion, also an exhibition with about 10 posters was put on.
In this survey we studied these kinds of mobility:
1. Home-school mobility (means of transport used daily to get to school, the distance from home to school, how many journeys they do during the week)
2. Other periodic mobility - for work, sports, fun – and the means of transport used and distance
3. Holiday mobility, either to Italian regions or abroad
4. Moving house mobility considering reasons and distance
The survey include our school staff and students; we processed data by dividing papers into 3 groups: the 4th class students, all the school students, the school staff.
1. We have seen that students live far from school whereas staff live near school: about 50% of staff live within 5 km from Caluso; nearly 50% students live very far from school.
Most students take the coach, 30% go by car , few students by motorbike.
50% school staff come to school on foot because they live in town, the rest go by car.
2. Other periodic movements done by students and school staff for sports, work, fun. About 50% of 4th class students have at least 3 periodic mobility, few students never go out from home; about 70% of total students have 2 or 3 periodic mobility; staff has more than 3 mobility. The reasons to move are different: about 15-20% of students and staff move periodically for work; 30% of students for fun; 50% of staff movement is due to other reasons.
Students have daily mobility for fun and sports whereas staff have just weekly mobility for fun and sports, and daily mobility for work.
Students often go by bus but most of them and staff go by car, maybe because the public transport system is not so efficient.
3. More than 80% of students have been to Piedmont , Aosta Valley and Liguria. 30% of school staff go on holiday to the south of Italy because they usually come from there.
The best known European countries are France, Switzerland and Spain for all the groups. The staff have travelled more , also to Portugal, Germany and England. None has gone to Finland and very few to Lithuania. Very few students have travelled out of the European boundaries. The staff have travelled much more, but none has been to the USA.
