De Lio was initially sacked in 2017 after prompting complaints for being “unprepared” and “inattentive” when she returned to work for four months a couple of years earlier.
But she took the dismissal to court, and the following year a judge in Venice ordered that she be reinstated to her role.The education minister, Unhappy with the decision, launched a counter-appeal, which went to Italy’s highest court, the Supreme Court of Cassation.Last week, the court reversed the decision to reinstate De Lio, labelling the two decades of absence as a sign of “permanent and absolute ineptitude.
Hitting out at the ruling, the history and philosophy teacher vowed to tell her side of the story and said she had documents to disprove the idea she had been absent for 20 years.