Recently, “non-cognitive” skills have been taken into serious consideration by the Italian legislature, so named by the bill approved by the Chamber of Deputies on January 11, 2022 and aimed at enabling them “in the educational and didactic activities of state and equal school institutions of every order and grade”. In critically asking ourselves, with regard to a certain pedagogical view, whether the expression “non-cognitive” attributed to the concept of “skills” is pertinent, we should first of all ask ourselves what such skills might consist of, although perhaps it would be legitimate to ask, even before that, what skills are in a broad sense at school, aware that the introduction of the concept of “competence” in school pedagogy, being rather recent, leads us to note that to date there is no specific and shared definition of it.