At the forefront of tradition
The SNS was founded in 1810 by Napoleon as a sister school of the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, to provide a high-level lay education for future teachers, and thus create a new European cultural élite.
Since its foundation, the Scuola has been continually striving to ensure the quality of research and teaching - which it considers as being intertwined - and to offer its students unique opportunities for intellectual growth and methodological awareness. Since 1810 the academic, productive and social context has changed, and the Normale has also changed, evolving in a constant dialogue with the present in order to continue being a vanguard of training and research.
The talent, merit and skills of its students, the high level and innovativeness of its research and its interaction with society are the basic values of its identity.
On these assumptions, the Normale has founded a liberal and democratic study community able to deal productively and dynamically with the crucial issues for the development of a sustainable society: a place where cultural, scientific and technological challenges find a fertile, open and stimulating environment, where the critical knowledge, methodological rigour and intellectual curiosity necessary to interpret the complexity in which humanity is immersed are developed, contributing to the growth of the country and of Europe.
In Italy the Normale was the first:
-Scuola universitaria (University)
-Scuola di dottorato (1927) (Doctoral school)
-Scuola di orientamento universitario (1967) (University orientation school)