Abstract
This chapter assesses inequalities in educational outcomes in Italy linking their evolution to changes in the Italian educational system. We analyze how to track choice and performance in PISA tests among 15-year olds are influenced by social origins. We consider how inequalities by social origins are intertwined with inequalities by immigrant status and area of residence. We detect a small reduction of inequalities in participation in the academic track and a reduction of inequality in achievement limited to the northern regions, but overall our results show high inertia in the reproduction of social inequalities. These results are observed during a period where the reduction of inequalities in education has remained a marginal issue in the policy debate as well as a marginal target of educational policies.
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Notes
- 1.
The only exception was the test administered at the lower secondary final examinations, which contributed to the final grade. However, due to the limited external control during this test, cheating at this test was common practice (INVALSI, 2017). Since 2017, the test has no longer any consequence for the final grade.
- 2.
Results obtained from the 2000 survey should be interpreted with caution because a relatively large proportion of students did not provide enough information to impute an achievement score. Excluding the cases that have a non-imputable score in at least one domain, the resulting sample is reduced from almost 5000 to slightly more than 1000 cases. Assuming that the missing cases are missing at random, as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and INVALSI do, those numbers are probably sufficient for the main, aggregate analysis, yet they are less reliable for the subgroup analysis. For this reason, when we test the significance of the changes in educational inequality over time, we use the 2003 survey as the starting point of the time series. The inclusion or exclusion of the 2000 wave does not substantially affect our main conclusions concerning the evolution of educational inequalities in Italy.
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Pensiero, N., Giancola, O., Barone, C. (2019). Socioeconomic Inequality and Student Outcomes in Italy. In: Volante, L., Schnepf, S., Jerrim, J., Klinger, D. (eds) Socioeconomic Inequality and Student Outcomes. Education Policy & Social Inequality, vol 4. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9863-6_5
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