A friend of mine is moving to Italy with his 14 year old daughter and was telling me about this.
After the 8th grade in Italy your daughter or son must decide what job or area of study to take.
It's not like in the U.S. where you don't have to decide what you want to be until 12th grade
or even after. How many 8th graders in the U.S. really know what they want to do in life
or at the very least change their mind completly dopo? At any rate I can see advantages to this.
There are students in the U.S. that graduate from high school and have no real job skill. Especially
now that they took all the shop classes out of U.S. high schools. Below you will see the different
areas and school programs the students must decide on.

The Italian School System | Italy What you Need to Know The Italian school system is offered free to all children
in Italy regardless of nationality. All children are required to attend ...
The Italian School System | Italy - Cached - Similar

I agree. It is a shame that so many young people here in the USA go to college and have no idea what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Batter attention needs to be paid at a younger age to the future of our children. I see far too many 30 somethings in the USA who have no real job because they wasted all of their college education. Hopefuly, what is going on in Italy will catch on here in the USA!

Yes Villa they have to decide but I want to point out it is not so drastic as it looks. Student who thinks they will go on can always take a general Liceo scientifico or classico ( one is more oriened toward Math and science, the other toward Literature ) and then decide what to do when they face up the University time. Anyway even if you take a more professional oriented school you can go on with the University.
Luca da Roma would be better than me in commenting this since he is writing some new articles on schools in Italy -

Grazie Paolo. This is good to know. Will tell my friend who
is moving to Italy.

Grazie Giacomo.

Things are changing in the US on a local level to a similar way of doing things. Here in northern Colorado children choose what curriculum to take after 8th grade too. The curriculum's for the most part are provided at each school rather than different schools for each curriculum - but there are also specialty or magnate schools that offer certain curriculums.

My daughter who just finised her freashman year (9th grade) is enrolled in what is called the International Baccalaurate program that specifies a very rigorous curriculum for her 4 years in high school with very few elective courses.

Yes and that is what is good Paolo. Here in the USA we need to have more high schools that cater to specific interests. There are too many students in my Spanish Class who have no interest in ever using Spanish! Why are they there??? They should be taking classes that interest them and that are related to the type of work that they want to do someday. I just can't understand why our society is so based on formal education. Some people are just not made to be writers or lawyers or doctors. Some people are more geared towards mechanical things or technical things...these people should be learning how to repair cars or build things, not writing esaays!!