Large-scale assessments and educational policies in Italy

Abstract

Despite Italy’s extensive participation in most large-scale assessments, their actual influence on Italian educational policies is less easy to identify. The present contribution aims at highlighting and explaining reasons for the weak and often inconsistent relationship between international surveys and policy-making processes in Italy. Specifically, it is mainly focused on PISA, because its results have gained greater exposure in the Italian public and political discourse as compared to results from other international studies (such as the ones developed by IEA). After an overview of Italy’s participation in international surveys and a description of the development of national evaluations in the Italian school system, this contribution shows the impact, weak though it may be, of PISA on Italian educational reforms, through the analyses of the regulatory interventions developed since 2003 and devoted to the reorganisation of upper secondary schools. In this paper, the explicit impact of PISA is identified beyond the regulatory interventions carried out by educational reforms, i.e. through several educational initiatives promoted by public authorities at local levels and in the improvement of the national system of students’ assessment. In the final section, questions about the need to effectively utilise international large-scale assessment findings in future policy reforms in Italy are raised.