Farewell to Rai Scuola and that notion of public service that is rooted in local areas and traditional products

From 1 October, Rai Scuola will close and "Italiana", the new channel dedicated by Rai to showcasing the regions, their local produce and national events, will begin broadcasting on digital terrestrial channel 57. The decision might appear to be one of the many programme schedule overhauls through which a television broadcaster periodically seeks to attract a different audience. In this case, however, the broadcaster is a public service organisation, the channel being axed is called Rai Scuola, and the available figures tell a story that makes it difficult to attribute its closure to viewer response.

For many years, Rai Scuola had minuscule viewing figures. Between 2015 and 2021, its average audience share generally remained between 0.01 and 0.03 per cent, then in 2022 a growth trend began which, by 2023, had raised the annual average to 0.13 per cent and to 0.14 per cent in 2024, whilst in 2025 the channel maintained 0.13 per cent. The change introduced by Auditel to the way audience share is calculated in May 2022 calls for caution when comparing figures with previous years, but it does not explain the further growth seen in 2023 – when the new method was already in force – and, above all, it does not negate the fact that, for three years, Rai Scuola maintained viewing figures far higher than those seen in its previous history. In 2026, a decline was observed, with figures hovering around 0.10 per cent in the early months, whilst by June the audience share had returned to 0.14.

Taken out of context, these figures make it all too easy to dismiss Rai Scuola as a channel that nobody watches. A 0.14 per cent audience share corresponds to an average of around 12,000–13,000 people watching the channel every minute of the day. As viewers come and go, the number of different individuals reached each day is much higher: Rai’s historical data show that as early as 2016, when Rai Scuola’s viewing figures were significantly lower, the channel reached 176,000 people a day. Based on the 2024 viewing figures, the daily audience can reasonably be estimated at several hundred thousand and, depending on the average viewing time, even around one million.

Rai also has another metric, perhaps even more relevant to the mission of a public service broadcaster. In the Qualitel 2024 survey, Rai Scuola achieved an overall satisfaction rating of 8.0 for the television channel, ranking second amongst the thematic channels behind Rai Storia; for its digital offering, it scored 8.1, on a par with RaiPlay and at the top of the digital platforms considered. The same survey awarded the cultural and educational programmes on the general-interest channels the highest average score, 8.2. These figures were produced by Rai itself, based on a survey of 25,000 people, and describe an audience that places a high value on precisely the kind of content that the public service has decided to sacrifice (Rai Press Office).

One might understand this decision had a public service function deemed even more urgent been planned in place of Rai Scuola. However, the press release in which Rai presents the new channel points in a different direction. “Italiana” stems from the “well-established success” of regional reporting and the experience of “Linea Verde”; it will launch with a selection of programmes that have already been broadcast and, from the following quarter, will add re-edited programmes, new productions and live coverage of major national events relevant to the channel’s themes. The stated aim is to explore Italian identity through the regions (RAI Press Office).

The problem lies precisely in the choice of priorities that emerges from this substitution. Italy is already one of the subjects most frequently covered by public television, through programmes dedicated to villages, cooking, agriculture, tourism and local produce, whilst Rai itself cites "Linea Verde" as the inspiration for the new project. Schools have far less airtime, in which a maths lesson, a physics experiment, a history of literature or a biology lesson can be presented without having to compete with the demands of general entertainment. The Rai Scuola website offers thousands of lessons organised into more than thirty subjects and over eighty sub-categories, alongside humanities courses, science workshops and in-depth features (Rai Scuola).

It is difficult to see this transformation as an expansion of the public service, because a function that is difficult to replace is being swapped for one of which there is already an abundance on television. Public service television certainly has a duty to portray the country and can do so through its culinary traditions and local festivals; however, when it eliminates its own educational channel in order to make room for this portrayal, it is establishing a very specific cultural hierarchy. Subject-specific knowledge loses a dedicated platform, whilst the portrayal of Italy through its regions, local specialities and events gains an entire network.

The issue becomes even more serious when we consider what is happening in Italian schools. For years, national and international surveys have documented difficulties with basic skills and significant regional disparities; at the same time, the public dissemination of scientific knowledge must contend with an information environment in which unregulated content can reach millions of people. In such a situation, it would be reasonable to ask how to strengthen a public infrastructure dedicated to education, how to link it more effectively to the real-world school system, and how to transform the growth in viewership seen in recent years into an even wider audience. Rai has chosen to shut down that television infrastructure.

Naturally, Rai Scuola’s content will continue to be available online, and part of its archive may be preserved on RaiPlay. However, a digital library serves a different purpose to a linear channel: it showcases a range of programmes, allows for chance encounters with content and, above all, affirms – through its presence in the public sphere – that education deserves a recognisable place within the national television system. Transferring an archive to the web preserves programmes; closing the channel eliminates that presence.

Finally, there is one fact that should make this decision particularly embarrassing: Rai Scuola is being axed at a time when its viewing figures in recent years are amongst the best in its history and Rai’s own quality surveys show very high levels of satisfaction. It is therefore not the public who have deemed Rai Scuola to be unnecessary. It is Rai itself that has decided that this slot can be put to better use for a different vision of public service.

From 1 October, instead of a channel that brings schools to television, we will have one built around the narrative of regional identity, with programmes initially drawn from daytime archives and, subsequently, live coverage of national events. These will certainly include highly commendable cultural initiatives, alongside that world of fairs, local produce and food festivals which has now become a national television genre. It is a choice that at least has the merit of clarity: in a country where it would be difficult to argue that there is an excess of education, the public service broadcaster has found a slot on television to take away from schools and dedicate to the local area. From schools to sausage festivals, on the same channel.