Teacher fired after high court ruling because she had skipped work for 20 years. She said she couldn't comment because she was at the beach.

• An Italian teacher was fired after a legal battle over her prolonged absences, the BBC reported.
• Cinzia Paolina De Lio did not come to work for 20 out of the 24 years she was a teacher.

A teacher in Italy may have taken "quiet quitting" to a new extreme after she failed to show up to work for a couple of decades.

The educator avoided going to work for 20 out of the 24 years she was employed, and, according to reports, was officially fired after a court decision last week.

Cinzia Paolina De Lio's school let her go in 2017 after several complaints about her teaching style, but reinstated her in 2018 after a ruling by a judge in Venice.

Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation reversed the decision earlier this week and called her prolonged absences at the school — in a seaside town near Venice — a "permanent and absolute ineptitude," the BBC reported.

De Lio was unhappy with the ruling and said she would "reconstruct the truth" with documents to prove her side of the story. She could not, however, expand on her defense, telling Italy's Repubblica newspaper, according to the BBC: "Sorry, but right now I'm at the beach."

"I will reconstruct the truth of the facts of this absolutely unique and surreal story," De Lio said.

"I don't answer questions from journalists thrown around that wouldn't do justice to the truth of my story," she added.

For the first 10 years of her tenure, she was completely absent, the BBC reported. Otherwise, the history and philosophy teacher used sick days, vacation time, and permits to attend conferences and avoid holding lessons, The Times reported.

The court heard that during the scarce periods when she was teaching, she was distracted by her phone, borrowed textbooks from students — who seemingly received grades at random — and her lessons generally seemed improvised and "confused," The Times reported.

The country's education ministry later said it would "increasingly strive to ensure that the activity of teaching is carried out with adequate professionalism," per the BBC.