Enacting Minority Language Rights Through High-Stakes Assessment: Task Design in the Slovene-Language First Written Paper of Italy’s School-Leaving Examination

Abstract

National school-leaving examinations do more than certify attainment: through task design, they define which forms of literacy, knowledge, and judgement receive institutional recognition. This study examines how Italy’s upper-secondary school-leaving examination is administered in Slovene, a protected minority language, and how task design gives institutional form to minority-language rights. A comparative document analysis covered six regular-session papers from 2019 and 2022–2026, comprising 42 options. Each option was analysed for source material, question sequence, final writing demand, identity positioning, and functions assigned to Slovene. The examination retains a three-type architecture: literary interpretation in Type A, source-based reasoning and argumentation in Type B, and autonomous critical-explanatory writing in Type C. Eight options address border- or minority-related content, six of them in Type B, while nine have a documented Italian-language counterpart. Minority-related content is framed for interpretation, contextualisation, and reasoned judgement without requiring identity affirmation. Candidates select one of seven options, so engagement with Slovene literature and minority-specific content is available but not compulsory. At the level of task design, the examination requires Slovene for literary interpretation, historical reasoning, source-based argumentation, and public-discourse writing, making these functions part of state certification in the protected language.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Education Sciences, 2026 · DOI ↗