Schooling in Siena, for a Family That Is Actually Moving

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There is one international school in the city and there is the Italian state system, and the choice between them shapes more than your child's timetable — it shapes which comune you should be living in, because the practical benefits attach to residency rather than to the school. This page sets out what each route involves, from the school's own site and the Comune's own notices. It does not rank anything, it prints no fee figure the school has not published, and where a source refused to be read we say so instead of filling the gap.

The short answer

• The international route is the International School of Siena, in the city. Teaching is in English, every pupil also learns Italian, and it runs from age three to eighteen. It is a private school and it does not publish its fees.
• The Italian route is the state system, which most families here use. It is free at the point of use; the costs that remain — meals, transport, books — are means-tested by the Comune, and generously so at the bottom of the scale.
• The thing nobody tells you first: before you can apply for almost any of it, you need an Italian digital identity. That is the real first step, and it is covered below.

The international school

The International School of Siena is at Via di Petriccio e Belriguardo 49/1, on the north-western side of the city. Everything in this section is from the school's own site, read on 14 August 2026.

Two things it says about itself are worth more to a relocating family than any of its marketing.

It prepares its Italian pupils for the Quinta Elementare and Terza Media examinations, and it states that the IB Diploma carries legal equivalence to the Maturità. If your worry is that an English-language education quietly closes the door to an Italian university, the school's own answer is that it does not.

And it is candid about what it cannot do. In its own words: "As a small school, we are able to provide only a very limited level of support for students with mild learning difficulties." If your child has identified needs, that sentence is the most important one on their website, and the school asks to be told at the point of application. We would rather quote it than bury it.

What applying actually involves

The sequence, from the school's admissions page: an enquiry form, a visit, a meeting with the Principal in person or online, then the application itself. The documents it asks for are a fair proxy for how much of your paperwork Italy will want:

• The application form, and a copy of the child's birth certificate or passport
• A copy of the Italian residence permit — Permesso di Soggiorno — for non-EU citizens
• School records for the previous two years, and the results of any academic or psychological assessments
• A vaccination record
• A Nulla Osta from any previous Italian school, from elementary level onward — the release document the Italian system uses when a child moves between schools
• Confidential teacher references, sent directly by the current school

Assessment is by school records, references, the child's language profile, an interview with the Principal, a classroom visit where possible, and CAT4 cognitive abilities testing. Acceptance comes by letter or email with a start date, and the contract is signed on campus, in person — worth knowing if you were planning to do all of this remotely.

On English: pupils entering Grades 7 to 9 are assessed by the school's English-language acquisition teachers, who set the language pathway. Those applying for Grades 10 to 13 are expected to arrive with age-appropriate literacy and oral fluency in English, and may sit an admissions examination covering listening, speaking, reading and writing. In other words, the older the child, the less the school can absorb a standing start.

Where entry is genuinely borderline, the school offers admission on a trial basis under a written agreement setting targets and timeframes. That is an unusually honest mechanism and worth asking about rather than waiting to be offered.

The Italian route, and what it actually costs

The state system is the one most families in Siena use, and the Comune publishes its side of it in detail. Everything below is from the Comune di Siena's own notices, read on 14 August 2026.

Before anything else: SPID, CIE or CNS. The Comune's school services are applied for online only, through its own service portal, and the portal accepts only an Italian digital identity — SPID, an electronic identity card, or a national services card. Either parent can use theirs, as can a legal guardian or a properly delegated intermediary. For a family that has just arrived, obtaining that identity is the first schooling task, not an administrative afterthought.

School meals. For 2026/27 the Comune confirmed its existing rates in May. For residents it is an ISEE-banded system with total exemption for households up to €5,500 and progressive contributions above that. There is a 20% reduction for a second child and 40% for a third and beyond using the service at the same time, applied on request through the Comune's form. Non-residents pay a flat €6.60 per meal, reduced to €5.28 from the second child. Attendance is recorded daily and you are billed for meals actually eaten, through PagoPA — and the Comune pulls your ISEE straight from the national social-security databases, so there is no paper to file.

Read that paragraph twice if you are choosing where to live. Residency is what separates a means-tested rate from a flat one.

School transport. Applications for 2026/27 ran from 1 May to 30 June, online only, for pupils at nurseries, primary and lower-secondary schools within the comune of Siena. The window matters: it closes at the end of June, long before most families think about September.

Books. The regional Libri Gratis scheme for 2026/27 covers secondary pupils resident in Tuscany, under 24, with an ISEE of €15,800 or less, enrolled at a state or state-recognised school in Tuscany or a neighbouring region. Applications are online, one per child, and the scheme excludes vocational-training courses, evening schools, adult-education centres and prison schools.

Younger than school age, the Comune runs its own nurseries and preschools, with published admission rankings and open days.

What we could not tell you, and why

The national enrolment procedure is not on this page. The Ministry of Education's own site answers at its homepage and then refuses its interior pages to us — a 403 at the edge, on every deep page we tried. Under our own source rules a blocked source is an unverified claim, not permission to go and find a friendlier one, so we have not described the national enrolment window or its steps from an expat forum, a relocation agency or a summary. The Comune's services above are what we could read. For the enrolment itself, the ministry and the individual school are the authorities, and they are the ones to ask.

The school's IB authorisation is the school's claim, not our finding. The International Baccalaureate's own school directory returns a 403 to us as well, and only that directory can settle whether a school currently holds a programme authorisation. So the section above says the school describes itself as an IB World School. We have no reason to doubt it; we simply have not verified it, and there is a difference.

We also cannot tell you whether the school has a place in your child's year, whether it suits your child, what it will cost you, or whether you will qualify as a resident in time for a given deadline. Those are the school's and the Comune's to answer, and both answer them.

How schooling should shape where you buy

This is the part that gets decided last and should be decided first.

• The international school is in the city of Siena. If it is your route, a daily commute from a hill town in the Val d'Orcia is a different life from what the photographs suggest — and the Comune's school transport does not serve it, because that is a municipal service for municipal schools.
• Municipal benefits follow the comune, not the province. Meals, transport and nursery places are Siena's to give to Siena's residents. Buying twenty minutes away puts you in a different comune with its own rates, its own windows and its own portal.
• Residency is a status, not an address. The flat non-resident meal rate is the cheapest illustration of what it costs not to have it.
• Deadlines cluster in spring for the following September. A purchase completing in August is a purchase completing after the transport window shut in June.

Buying a home in Tuscany covers the purchase itself. If you are still deciding where to base yourself while you look, where to stay in Siena and countryside stays around Siena set out the trade-off between the city and the province in the same terms.

Continue Reading

• Buying a home in Tuscany — the purchase, the taxes and the process
• Where to stay in Siena — the city's quarters, and what each is like to live in
• Countryside stays around Siena — what "twenty minutes out" really means
• Have us arrange it — if you would rather someone made the calls

Sources

Read on 14 August 2026. The two school sources were supplied by our publisher; neither had been opened before this page was written.

• International School of Siena — and its about, admissions process, fees, campus and calendar pages — the address, the ages and stages, English as the language of instruction, the Quinta Elementare and Terza Media preparation, the Maturità equivalence, the admissions sequence and document list, the language pathway rules, the trial-admission mechanism, and the school's own statement about the limits of its learning support
• Inspired Education — our schools — consulted for the group relationship only. Its school directory is script-rendered and its served page names four schools, so it neither confirms nor contradicts the school's own statement of membership, and we treat that as a limitation rather than a finding
• Comune di Siena — Istruzione, and its notices on school meal rates for 2026/27 (19 May 2026), school transport enrolment and Libri Gratis 2026/27 — the ISEE bands and the €5,500 exemption, the sibling reductions, the €6.60 and €5.28 non-resident rates, PagoPA billing and automatic ISEE retrieval, the 1 May–30 June transport window and the SPID/CIE/CNS requirement, and the €15,800 books threshold with its exclusions

Two sources refused us, and the page says so where it matters rather than only here: ibo.org, which is the only body that can confirm an IB authorisation, and the interior pages of mim.gov.it, which are the only authority for the national enrolment procedure. Both returned HTTP 403 on 14 August 2026. Nothing has been substituted for either.

No fee figure for the International School of Siena appears on this page, because the school publishes none. No school is ranked, compared or called best. And no figure for the school's roll or the number of nationalities it teaches appears either — its own site gives two different numbers for that on the same page, so we print neither.

By the Siena & Toscana editors