Conference Program

School Participatory Budgeting (SPB) has recently emerged as an innovative practice aimed at fostering democratic participation within educational institutions. Inspired by the broader experience of participatory budgeting (PB), first developed in the late 1980s in Porto Alegre, SPB adapts the idea of involving citizens in budgeting decisions to the school environment by enabling students to deliberate on and decide the allocation of a portion of school resources. In recent years, several Italian schools have experimented with SPB processes in which students propose, develop and vote on projects financed through a share of the school budget.

While SPB is often framed primarily as a pedagogical tool for civic education, this paper argues that its relevance lies in its potential to reshape democratic practices within schools. SPB should be understood more fundamentally as a laboratory/experiment for rethinking democratic governance in educational institutions, challenging existing forms of school governance and democratic practice. By combining deliberation in working groups with final universal voting assemblies, SPB creates a structured process through which students can engage directly with collective decision-making and the management of shared resources.

However, more than procedural design or structural conditions, the effective implementation of SPB depends on the presence of a participatory mindset within the school community. Schools are typically characterized by hierarchical organizational structures, limited decision-making autonomy and institutional cultures in which participation often remains formal or symbolic. In such contexts, participatory initiatives risk being reduced to episodic exercises that have little impact on actual decision-making processes.

Drawing on evidence from the Erasmus+ project School Participatory Budget: A Tool to Foster School Democracy and from more than ten case studies in Italy, this paper explores these tensions and examines the conditions under which SPB can move beyond symbolic participation toward a more stable integration into school governance. The analysis suggests that the success of SPB depends fundamentally on the willingness of school actors—students, teachers and school leaders—to reconsider established roles and to recognize students as legitimate participants in collective decision-making. In this sense, SPB should not be understood simply as a technical tool, but as a catalyst for developing a participatory culture capable of supporting more democratic forms of school governance.