The report of the superintendent of education Giuseppe Biundi (1873) on the condition of primary education in the province of Catania in the first decade of life of the Kingdom of Italy

Abstract

From the mid-60s to the 70s of the nineteenth century, the number of schools, pupils and expenditure on primary education, in the province of Catania, had a decisive increase. Evidence of this growth was the report of the superintendent of education Giuseppe Biundi, requested by the Ministry of Education on the occasion Universal Exposition of the Vienna, in order to give nations the framework of popular education in our country. The analysis of this new documentary source allows us not only to know some details on the condition of education in the province of Catania (number of public and private primary schools, number of male and female primary school teachers and possession of a teaching qualification, expenditure on primary education in the province), but it gives us an interesting comparative statistic with some northern provinces that, in the period between 1864 and 1872, had an equivalent population.