In Italian public schools, the number of students is falling, but the number of those who say no to the Teaching of the Catholic Religion (IRC) is still growing (more than 82,000 more): in the 2022/23 school year, in fact, those who do not take advantage of the Catholic religion are 1,096,846, while in 2020/21 they were 1,014,841, with a secular leap forward of one and a half percentage points, from 14.07 percent two years ago to 15.5 percent today. This is the picture drawn by the Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics (UAAR) following a request for civic access to data submitted to the Ministry of Education. An analysis of the data shows that in as many as six provinces the 30 percent threshold of non- availing students was exceeded. These are Florence (37.92 percent), Bologna (36.31 percent), Trieste (33.37 percent), Prato (33.19 percent), Gorizia (32.51 percent) and Aosta (30.74 percent). At the regional level, Valle d'Aosta leads the ranking (30.74%), followed by Emilia Romagna (27.48%) and Tuscany (27.12%). The North-South divide is confirmed: in fact, the regions at the bottom of the list in terms of the number of non availants are Basilicata (2.98 percent), Campania (3.11 percent), Calabria (3.41 percent), Puglia (3.67 percent), Molise (3.87 percent) and Sicily (4.57 percent).
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