A 13-year-old schoolboy stabbed his music teacher with a kitchen knife, leaving the blade stuck in the teacher's back as he made his escape.
The pair had just finished a private violin lesson at a middle school near Venice when the pupil allegedly turned on him, stabbing him once in the back.
Teacher Fabio Paggioro, 36, had reportedly told the boy, ''See how you manage to do well when you put the effort in''.
Police said the stabbing was premeditated, as the boy had brought in a large kitchen knife from home.
After the boy fled, Paggioro managed to alert a piano teacher in the next room who removed the knife from her colleague's back and called an ambulance.
Paggioro is expected to make a full recovery and told hospital staff he did not want to speak to the media.
Regional schools director Carmela Palumbo said she had spoken with the boy's headmaster and that there had been no previous problems with the boy.
''He's a normal student with not particularly brilliant marks, but he's always been respectful, to the extent that he received a nine (out of ten) for conduct,'' Palumbo said.
''Unfortunately the young people of today are often victims of violence and sometimes they become the protagonists,'' she added.
Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini said she was ''dismayed'' by the stabbing and expressed sympathy for the teacher.
Last year Gelmini reintroduced conduct grades and set up a bullying task force in an effort to crack down on bad behaviour in the classroom after repeated incidents of bullying, both between pupils and 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.
