In 2015, a new performance-related pay scheme was introduced for schoolteachers in Italy as part of education accountability policies aimed at improving their performance. Beginning in that year, all Italian state school principals were offered the opportunity to distribute wage bonuses to deserving teachers. During the first year of…

Background: Bullying is widely acknowledged as one of the most harmful events in a child's life, leading to negative life experiences and outcomes. However, 'school effects of bullying' are rarely studied from an international perspective, especially with international large-scale data. Purpose: In this study, we aim to look at bullying through an…

Calls for increased monitoring and evaluation of education policies and practices have not, so far, included widespread and consistent assessments of the inclusiveness of education settings. Measuring inclusion in education has proven to be a challenging exercise, due not only to the complexity and different uses of the concept, but also to its…

Globalisation and policy transfer in education make it incumbent upon decision makers to prioritise among competing policy options, select policy initiatives that are appropriate for their national contexts, and understand how system-specific factors moderate the relationship between those policies and student outcomes. This study used qualitative…

Many countries are struggling to reconcile greater flexibility in school choice with the need to ensure quality, equity and coherence in their school systems. This report provides an international perspective on issues related to school choice, especially how certain aspects of school-choice policies may be associated with sorting students into…

Resilience refers to the capacity of individuals to prosper despite encountering adverse circumstances. This paper defines academic resilience as the ability of 15-year-old students from disadvantaged backgrounds to perform at a certain level in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in reading, mathematics and science that…

This paper analyses the relationship between the public funding systems of higher education in Italy and the Netherlands and their universities' performances. Empirically, an efficiency analysis on 13 Dutch and 58 Italian public universities is conducted. The findings show that the relative efficiency of Italian and Dutch universities is strongly…

This article problematises the recent "merit turn" in the Italian education system. It addresses the analysis of how the global idea of "merit as lever for modernisation" and its related technologies have flowed into a regional education space through a set of four policy trajectories. It explores how these have partially…

This article focuses on analysing the effect of educational differentiation policies of OECD educational systems on socioeconomically disadvantaged students, based on data from PISA 2009. The analysis is conducted on the basis of a definition of two subgroups of disadvantaged students: those that achieve high scores, and those obtaining scores…

This article investigates the effect of school autonomy on multiple measures of student achievement, combining the individual data of the students participating in the International Civics and Citizenship Survey with their results in the national high stakes standardized tests at the end of eighth grade administered by the Italian National…

This policy profile on education in Italy is part of the "Education Policy Outlook" series, which presents comparative analysis of education policies and reforms across The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Building on the OECD's substantial comparative and sectorial policy knowledge base, the…

Understanding the factors that encourage young people to become active agents in their own learning is critical. Positive psychology is one lens that can be used to investigate the factors that facilitate a student's sense of agency and active school engagement. In the second edition of this groundbreaking handbook, the editors draw together the…

Over the period 1995-1998 Italy experienced an expansion of its higher education supply with the aim of reducing regional differences in educational attainment. This paper evaluates the effects of this policy on enrolment, drop out and academic performance. The paper combines differences across provinces in the number of campuses constructed with…

Despite all intentions in the course of the Bologna Process and decades of investment into improving the social dimension, results in many national and international studies show that inequity remains stubbornly persistent, and that inequity based on socio-economic status, parental education, gender, country-of-origin, rural background and more…

This paper provides evidence on the sources of differences in inequality in educational scores and their evolution over time in four European countries. Using Programme for International Student Assessment data from the 2000 and the 2006 waves, the paper shows that inequality decreased in Germany and Spain (two "decentralised" schooling…