Take time off to retrain without resigning
Italy has two study-leave rights and they run in opposite directions. The 150-ore permits are paid, and most collective agreements reserve them for school and university qualifications, so a private bootcamp usually falls outside them. The congedo per la formazione is unpaid, lasts up to 11 months, and asks nothing at all about who runs the course. So the one that pays is probably closed to you, and the one that is open pays nothing but keeps your job. This page is about using the second one properly.
Not funding, but the thing that makes funding usable
Nothing on this page moves money. The congedo per la formazione, set out in article 5 of law 53/2000, suspends your employment for a period you agree, with your job and your seniority protected and your pay stopped. Read plainly, that sounds like the weakest item on this site. In practice it is one of the strongest, because the obstacle for most employed people considering a full-time bootcamp is not the fee at all: it is that the course runs during working hours and resigning to attend it is an enormous risk. This right removes exactly that risk. You go, you train, and the job is still there. What makes it usable for a course like ours is the absence of the condition that closes most Italian instruments: the congedo covers training activities the worker chooses, with no accreditation, no regional catalogue and no approval of the provider anywhere in it. That is the opposite of the 150-ore permits, which are paid precisely because the collective agreement defines narrowly what they may be spent on, and that definition is usually a recognised school or university qualification rather than a private course.
Five years of service with your current employer, in the private or public sector. The seniority is with this employer rather than across your career, which is the condition that most often decides it. It is worth checking your exact start date before you plan around this.
Up to 11 months, once in a working life. You can take it continuously or split it into periods, which is what makes it fit a part-time or modular course as well as a full-time one.
The training is yours to choose, and nothing asks who provides it. No accreditation, no regional catalogue, no prior approval of the course. An online bootcamp run by a company outside Italy sits inside this right exactly as an Italian classroom does.
Your job and your seniority are protected; your pay is not. The contract is suspended. Plan the period as unpaid, and plan the fee separately, because this right does not touch either.
The period can be made good for pension purposes. Riscatto lets you recover the contribution gap afterwards at your own cost, which is the detail that decides it for people in mid-career and is worth pricing with a patronato before you commit.
Your employer can defer, within limits, but this is a right rather than a request. Collective agreements set quotas and the situations in which a period may be postponed. A deferral moves your dates; it does not remove the entitlement.
Frequently asked questions
Can my employer simply say no?
It can postpone, within the limits its collective agreement sets, and those limits usually turn on how many people in a unit can be away at once and on documented operational needs. What it cannot do is treat the entitlement as discretionary, because this is a right in law rather than a favour. In practice the useful move is to make deferral easy: propose dates, offer alternatives, and give more than the 30 days' notice the law requires. A request that leaves room to negotiate the calendar rarely turns into a fight about the principle.
Does the congedo cover a private online bootcamp?
On its terms, yes. Article 5 refers to training activities the worker chooses and which the employer does not finance, and it attaches no accreditation, recognition or geography condition to the provider. That is genuinely unusual among Italian instruments, most of which are scoped to regional catalogues or accredited bodies. Bring the programme, the hours and the dates with your request, because what the employer needs to see is a definite period rather than proof that the school is on some list, and there is no list.
Will I be paid during the leave?
No. The contract is suspended and pay stops, which is the trade for keeping the job and the seniority. That is why the last section of this page matters more here than on most of our pages: the fee has to be spread across months in which you have no salary, which is exactly what interest-free instalments are for. If you need income during the period rather than only job protection, the honest answer is that this right does not provide it, and you should look at whether your situation instead points to NASpI, which does.
What about my pension contributions?
They stop with your pay, and you can recover the period afterwards through riscatto at your own cost. Whether that is worth doing depends on your age, your contribution history and how long the leave is, so it is a calculation rather than a rule of thumb. A patronato will run it for you at no charge, and it is much better done before you fix the length of the leave than after, because the answer sometimes argues for a shorter period.
Can I use the 150-ore permits instead and get paid?
Only if your CCNL says so, and most do not for a course like ours. The paid permits exist alongside this right and are regulated by collective bargaining rather than by law, and the agreements typically frame them around recognised school and university qualifications. Ask your union representative or works council about your own agreement, because sectors differ and it costs nothing to find out. If the answer is no, that is a fact about how the permits are defined rather than about the course, and the congedo is the instrument that does cover it.
I have been with my employer for three years. Is there anything for me?
Not this right, which needs five years with the current employer. What is left depends on your situation rather than on your seniority. If you hold a partita IVA the fee is deductible; if you are in South Tyrol the province funds most of it; and the shortest route for anyone employed is asking the company to pay for the training outright, which has no seniority condition at all. Our shorter self-paced courses with regular instructor meetings also run outside working hours, which sidesteps the leave question entirely. See what is running now
Get personalised advice
Financing can depend on many factors in Italy (employment status, region, timing, and available calls). Our education specialists can help you compare instalment plans and CLA discounts, and also point you toward Italy-relevant routes such as Programma GOL and regional FSE+ vouchers. If you’re currently employed, we can also discuss employer-sponsored training approaches (for example through Interprofessional Funds or dedicated upskilling measures when active). For a broad overview of public incentives and regional calls, you can also consult the official portal <a href='https://www.incentivi.gov.it/it' target='_blank' rel='noreferrer' class='underline'>incentivi.gov.it</a>.
