The cabinet on Friday approved high school reforms aimed to better prepare students to enter the workplace.
Under the measures proposed by Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini, the current offering of almost 400 curricula will be dramatically streamlined.
Instead, two new types of high school (music and dance and human sciences) will be added to the current four main specialisation schools - arts, classics, sciences and linguistics - offering students ten curricula options.
Gelmini said the streamlining was aimed at providing students with a ''strong entrance to the world of work''.
''School must ease the entry of young people into the world of work. It must educate children by preparing them for an ever more competitive future,'' she said.
The reforms also foresee an increase in hours spent on maths, physics and science as well as making the study of one foreign language obligatory, with a second to be added further down the line.
In the fifth year, students will also be taught a non-linguistic subject in a foreign language ''in order to fall in step with Europe,'' Gelmini said.
The minister added that the number of hours spent at school will also be brought in line with those in high-performing countries such as Finland (856 hours a year).
The reforms will be phased in gradually, involving the first two year groups in 2010-2011 and will be fully applied in 2013.
''We decided not to begin the reform immediately to give schools a chance to get used to the new programme,'' Gelmini said.
