IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bdi/opques/qef_218_14.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The quality of Italian education: a comparison between the international and the national assessments

Author

Listed:
  • Pasqualino Montanaro

    (Bank of Italy)

  • Paolo Sestito

    (Bank of Italy)

Abstract

This work verifies the consistency of the results of two surveys of Italian students' proficiency: the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and Italy's national assessment (Invalsi), both conducted in 2012. Focusing especially on the common part of the reference student population (15-year-olds in the second year of high school), the two surveys offer evidence of a similar pattern of achievement differentials in Italy both in relation to different family backgrounds and at the geographical level. The results are also consistent with regard to the overall variance of the scores, although some problems arise in the Invalsi national assessment owing to a significant incidence of cheating and imperfect correction for it, which generates further variability of scores. The two surveys also provide similar results at the level of both individual students and schools. These findings are a good starting point for the joint use and re-designing of the two surveys; in particular, they suggests the advisability of designing ex ante mechanisms for anchoring the Invalsi scores in the metrics provided by PISA, with the indubitable advantage of permitting comparisons across time and with other OECD countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Pasqualino Montanaro & Paolo Sestito, 2014. "The quality of Italian education: a comparison between the international and the national assessments," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 218, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
  • Handle: RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_218_14
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/qef/2014-0218/QEF_218.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marco Paccagnella & Paolo Sestito, 2014. "School cheating and social capital," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(4), pages 367-388, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Antonio Accetturo & Andrea Linarello & Andrea Petrella, 2017. "Legal enforcement and Global Value Chains: micro-evidence from Italian manufacturing firms," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 397, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Massimo Finocchiaro Castro & Calogero Guccio, 2020. "Birds of a feather flock together: trust in government, political selection and electoral punishment," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 184(3), pages 263-287, September.
    2. Di Tommaso, Maria Laura & Maccagnan, Anna & Mendolia, Silvia, 2018. "The Gender Gap in Attitudes and Test Scores: A New Construct of the Mathematical Capability," IZA Discussion Papers 11843, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Marco Bertoni & Giorgio Brunello & Marco Alberto De Benedetto & Maria De Paola, 2019. "External Monitors And Score Manipulation In Italian Schools: Symptomatic Treatment Or Cure?," Working Papers 201907, Università della Calabria, Dipartimento di Economia, Statistica e Finanza "Giovanni Anania" - DESF.
    4. Cavalieri, Marina & Finocchiaro Castro, Massimo & Guccio, Calogero, 2023. "Organised crime and educational outcomes in Southern Italy: An empirical investigation," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).
    5. Marina Cavalieri & Massimo Finocchiaro Castro & Calogero Guccio, 2020. "Does the Fish Rot from the Head? Organised Crime and Educational Outcomes in Southern Italy," Working papers 97, Società Italiana di Economia Pubblica.
    6. Checchi, Daniele & De Paola, Maria, 2017. "The Effect of Multigrade Classes on Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills: Causal Evidence Exploiting Minimum Class Size Rules in Italy," IZA Discussion Papers 11211, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Giuseppe Albanese & Guido Blasio & Paolo Sestito, 2016. "My parents taught Me. Evidence on the family transmission of values," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 29(2), pages 571-592, April.
    8. Checchi, Daniele & De Paola, Maria, 2018. "The effect of multigrade classes on cognitive and non- cognitive skills. Causal evidence exploiting minimum class size rules in Italy✰," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 235-253.
    9. Federico Cingano & Marco Tonello, 2020. "Law Enforcement, Social Control and Organized Crime: Evidence from Local Government Dismissals in Italy," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 6(2), pages 221-254, July.
    10. Alessandro Bucciol & Simona Cicognani & Natalia Montinari, 2020. "Cheating in university exams: the relevance of social factors," International Review of Economics, Springer;Happiness Economics and Interpersonal Relations (HEIRS), vol. 67(3), pages 319-338, September.
    11. Carla Altobelli & Gaetano Fausto Esposito, 2014. "Capitale fiduciario e sviluppo a livello regionale: un?analisi esplorativa del ruolo del capitale civico e morale," RIVISTA DI ECONOMIA E STATISTICA DEL TERRITORIO, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 2014(3), pages 5-39.
    12. Masci, Chiara & Ieva, Francesca & Agasisti, Tommaso & Paganoni, Anna Maria, 2016. "Does class matter more than school? Evidence from a multilevel statistical analysis on Italian junior secondary school students," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 47-57.
    13. Bracco, E. & De Paola, M. & Green, C.P., 2015. "Long lasting differences in civic capital: Evidence from a unique immigration event in Italy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 160-173.
    14. Contini, Dalit & Tommaso, Maria Laura Di & Mendolia, Silvia, 2017. "The gender gap in mathematics achievement: Evidence from Italian data," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 32-42.
    15. Silvia Giacomelli & Marco Tonello, 2015. "Measuring the performance of local governments: evidence from mystery calls," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 292, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    16. Tommaso Agasisti & Francesca Ieva & Anna Maria Paganoni, 2017. "Heterogeneity, school-effects and the North/South achievement gap in Italian secondary education: evidence from a three-level mixed model," Statistical Methods & Applications, Springer;Società Italiana di Statistica, vol. 26(1), pages 157-180, March.
    17. Silvia Giacomelli & Carlo Menon, 2017. "Does weak contract enforcement affect firm size? Evidence from the neighbour’s court," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 17(6), pages 1251-1282.
    18. Lucifora, Claudio & Tonello, Marco, 2015. "Cheating and social interactions. Evidence from a randomized experiment in a national evaluation program," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 45-66.
    19. Giacomelli, Silvia & Tonello, Marco, 2018. "Assessing bureaucratic start-up costs through Mystery Calls. Evidence from the One-stop shops for doing business," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 121-140.
    20. Sergio Longobardi & Patrizia Falzetti & Margherita Maria Pagliuca, 2018. "Quis custiodet ipsos custodes? How to detect and correct teacher cheating in Italian student data," Statistical Methods & Applications, Springer;Società Italiana di Statistica, vol. 27(3), pages 515-543, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    school; surveys of students' proficiency JEL Classification: I20; I21;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General
    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_218_14. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdigvit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.