Italy is to bring back an official grade for high-school students' behaviour as part of efforts to curb a rise in bullying.
''This is a necessary move. If they don't make the grade they will have to repeat the school year,'' said Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini, announcing the move after a meeting of the centre-right government Thursday.
As well as reviving the possibility of the once-feared 'zero in condotta' mark - the title of a 1940 film by Vittorio De Sica - the education ministry is reintroducing civics classes to help bolster students' knowledge of the society and the Constitution, Gelmini said.
The 'conduct' grade was abolished ten years ago by a centre-left minister who made it impossible to fail students solely on the basis of misbehaviour.
The minister's new Students' Statute replaced regulations that had been in force since the Fascist era.
Since the statute came into force in 1998, schools have only been able to suspend students for two weeks for misconduct but not expel or fail them.
However, serious incidents of bullying have resulted in police cases. The last education minister, also from the centre left, was planning to use fines to deter bullies.
A local court earned applause last year by ruling that bullies' parents could be held legally accountable for their offspring and made to pay fines, but the verdict was not applied.
Reacting to Gelmini's announcement, a students union said it would stage a nationwide protest in October against what it called a return to ''repressive'' Fascist methods.
The new government led by Silvio Berlusconi says it is determined to stamp out bullying.
One of its first moves upon taking office in May was to set up a bullying task force aimed at schools, kids and parents.
Italian parents' association MOIGE welcomed the announcement, which comes on the heels of repeated incidents of bullying in Italian schools, both between pupils themselves and between children and their teachers.
The incidents have included taunting disabled or otherwise 'different' kids, spreading earthworms, wrecking facilities, setting fire to classmates' and teachers' hair and molesting or raping girls in toilets or classrooms.
Many cases have ended up on the Internet after the incidents were filmed by pupils on mobile phones.
In one case that hit the national news, a teacher was filmed while a young student apparently tugged at her underwear.
In April 2007 Italy was shocked by the suicide of a teenager who was subjected to anti-gay taunts at a Turin school.
According to a study released in December by the Italian Pediatric Society, bullying has risen by 6% in the last two years with almost three-quarters of young teenagers between the ages of 12 and 14 saying they had either witnessed or been affected by incidents.
More boys than girls said they had some experience of bullying: 75.6% compared to 69.1%.
