The agency has contributed to public discourse on the subject amid a wave of violence in Italian schools which saw a teacher stabbed in the back by an angry student near Milan Monday.

Further, said the polling institute, some 17.6 per cent of teaching staff had been threatened by students.

In the entire school system, one in 10 teachers had been attacked and 16 per cent had been threatened at least once, said Eurispes, publishing its second report on Italian schools and universities.

ANSA