1st: School, of course - Part 2

There is plenty of differences between the two secondary school systems.
Firstly the age of official state exams: in Italy at 14 and 19 yo, in the UK at 7, 11, 16 (GCSE)  and 18 (A level) yo. This discrepancy creates obstacles when families want to move between the two Countries. (To be honest, the problem isn't limited to the UK and Italy: across Europe, relocating is easy if children are younger than 14 and older than 19, in between the difficulties could forbid the project.)
A small note about the GCSE: if a student has studied 10 subjects in the years 9 to 11, he has to do 10 GCSEs; most of them are organised in 3 or 4 "papers", this is the reason why the GCSE lasts one month on average.
Secondly, the subjects. If there aren't big differences until year 11 - Seconda Superiore (in both systems pupils study 10 or 11 subjects, depending on their choices), from Y12, British pupils choose 3 or 4 subjects which they deepen a lot, because the average school timetable includes 8 lessons per weeks for each.
Thirdly: in Italy, after the Maturità, pupils can choose almost every university path. Obviously, if he studied something very technical like, for instance, information technology he hardly could study classical at Uni but it's not forbidden. In the UK pupils have to have the right A-levels: with Maths-Further Maths-physics-chemistry you cannot choose English Lit! This could be a big problem for pupils uncertain about their future carrier, but I reckon that it's almost the same in Italy when someone chooses the wrong secondary school. More or less...
Fourthly: the university applications. For us, what we do at school is enough to apply at the university. Yes, sometimes they want an English certification but nowadays every good school provides pupils with specific courses and exams. Here it's quite different because applicants have to demonstrate, not only to be passionate about the subject they want to study, but also to be "whole": active in their community with a voluntary job in some local charity for examples, with some work experiences either in the chosen field or in other activities, to be able to work with elderly people or with children, to sing in the church choir or to perform in the local theatre association. Not everything, of course, but something. They learn how to plan the right path to reach the goal, they choose from several activities their favourite, they learn that the school is only one, although the most important, of the necessary engagement for reach their target.

That's all, thank you for reading this claptrap (nice word!), next time I'll be shorter, I promise  😊