(1097.pdf) THE EQUITY OF ITALIAN SCHOOL SYSTEM: A TERRITORIAL ANALYSIS OF SOCIO-ECONOMIC GRADIENT

摘要

This paper provides an analysis of Italian students' achievement on the basis of OECD Programme forInternational Student Assessment (PISA) 2009 data. In line with results by the previous editions, PISA2009 underlines the lower performance of Italian 15-year olds in relation to their counterparts frommost of the developed countries involved in the survey. The low achievement of Italian students, whichconflicts with the high level of education expenditure per pupil, leads to analyze the determinants oftheir poor performance focusing on the significant relationship between literacy skills and socioeconomicstatus. This relationship, called socio-economic gradient, is a useful policy device because itprovides a framework that emphasizes both levels of schooling outcomes and the equality ofoutcomes among advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Given the hierarchical nature of data(students nested into schools), we also employ multilevel statistical techniques in order to decomposeand investigate the role of socio-economic context on students' achievement. The main resultshighlight the stratification of students into different types of schools and the segregation of studentsfrom different family backgrounds. Therefore, a reorganization of educational investments could berequired in order to readdress the available financial funds to schools which operate in poorerterritorial contexts.