Hello! We are an English speaking family from San Francisco California coming to Florence for three months on 1 February from Barcelona. Our children are 11 and 8 and I was wondering of there are any playgroups for older children? Also does anyone know if it is possible to enroll in public schools for short term. We are renting an apartment in Santa Croce and I’ve already contacted several of the classes from your recommendations. Thanks for the information and look forward to connecting! All the best, Jeannine jeanninemiles@yahoo.com
Firenze Moms 4 Moms Network
We know how hard it is to move to another country, let alone with little children.
Firenze Moms 4 Moms Network 
7 responses to “Public Schools”
Istituto Serve di Maria in via Faentina, private catholic school, very open mindedly run.
Sisters are from all over the world, we have two from India in kindergarden and they speak english. they help the main teacher, who is not a nun.
But I don’t really know about the higher grades. You can contact the school if you haven’t found anything by now
055 588083 or the director, Nicoletta Benini, 338 76999773.
hope it helps.
Hi, I have a girl aged 11 and a boy aged 9. Unfortunately we aren’t in Florence itself and both my children go to a local school. From what I know, your children wouldn’t be able to enter the public school system and to be honest it wouldn’t be an easy experience – the school system is underfunded with scant resources available and particularly unequipped to deal with non Italian speaking children. The only way they seem to deal with a language problem is to put your children in a class a few years below his age and let them get on with it. On the other hand the International School would accept them if there were places available.
If you would like to meet up sometime please contact me, my e mail is vivinic1@tin.it
That is what I’ve heard about the public schools. We’ve been roadschooling them since September and were looking for a little support and friends for her. I would very much like to meet up, thanks for the offer. Where are you? I will e-mail you
Jeannine
Sorry, I cannot help with with the public school question but I do want to make a strong recommendation for the private Kindergarten School http://www.kindergarten.it/ We are also here for only three months but my children are very happy here even though they only know a few Italian words.
Thanks Audrey! I will look into it.
forget about public school for sucha short time th eonly shcool may be it would be sacro cuore that is private
hope to met you during your stying in florence
alessandra
Thanks for the tip Alessandra. I will check it out. We arrive in Florence on the 1st and look forward to meeting up.
Jeannine