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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.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Bruno Losito for his guidance and valuable advice in drafting this contribution.
Notes
1. International symposium on IEA results, Mastery Learning, and their implications for educational policies and practices (Simposio internazionale sui risultati IEA, il Mastery Learning e le loro implicazioni per la politica e la pratica educative), European Centre of Education – CEDE, Villa Falconieri, Frascati. 28–30 March 1977.
2. Aldo Visalberghi was one of the most important Italian researchers in the field of education and a member of the IEA General Assembly. He strongly supported Italian participation in the international comparative studies carried out by the Association from its very beginning. The following paragraph describes his actions at CEDE.
3. The Lisbon strategy (2000) set the EU objectives for 2010 and addressed European major structural challenges – globalisation, climate change, the economic downturn –aiming to stimulate growth and making the economy greener and more innovative. http://ec.europa.eu/archives/growthandjobs_2009/.
4. Decree of the President of the Republic No. 419 May 31st 1974 art.12.
5. Decree of the President of the Republic No. 275 March 8th 1999.
6. Directive No. 307 May 21st 1997.
7. Legislative decree No. 258 July 20th 1999. The current name and the aims of the Institute derive from its reorganisation by legislative decree No. 286 19th November 2004.
8. Law 53/2003, art.3.
9. INVALSI tests only Italian and Mathematics. Science is not assessed.
10. Decree of the President of the Republic No. 80 March 28th 2013.
11. Other relevant studies and surveys are carried out by different institutes, i.e. ISFOL (Institute for the professional development of workers – Istituto per lo sviluppo della formazione professionale dei lavoratori) carried out the OECD-PIAAC survey (2012) and the Ministry of Education (MIUR) carried out the OECD-TALIS survey (2013).
12. The issue of maintenance work on schools is an urgent and constant topic on the national political agenda.
13. Documento d’indirizzo per la sperimentazione dell’insegnamento di ‘Cittadinanza e Costituzione’ (March 4th 2009, No. 2079).
14. For instance, schools could decide whether ‘Citizenship and Constitution’ should be a separate subject, an integrated subject with History or Geography or a cross-curricular subject.
15. Before decree 417/1974, it was enough to have a specific secondary education degree to become a teacher in primary schools.
16. These studies are focused on the influences of PISA in national/federal assessment and evaluation policies and practices and offer no in-depth analysis on the barriers that have resulted in a weak policy use of PISA results.
17. The study covered PISA 2000, 2003 and the initial response to PISA 2006.
18. The other countries with relatively low levels of policy impact of PISA were Czech Republic, Ireland, the Netherlands, the Slovak Republic, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hong Kong-China, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, the Republic of Serbia and Uruguay.
19. The other countries where very little policy change in response to PISA was recorded include Indonesia, Portugal, Canada, Australia and France.
20. The EU objectives for 2010 were set in the Lisbon strategy (2000).
21. The licei represent the general pathway in the upper secondary level of education in Italy, as opposed to technical and vocational schools.
22. In Italy, VET institutions are organised at the regional level, while licei, technical and vocational schools are organised at the national level.
23. ‘Norme generali ed i livelli essenziali delle prestazioni sul secondo ciclo del sistema educativo di istruzione e formazione ai sensi della legge 28 marzo 2003, n.53’.
24. In 2002, the Association TREELLLE organised a seminar with Letizia Moratti (the Italian Minister of Education) and Estelle Morris (the British Secretary of State for Education and Skills) to discuss the first round of PISA results. In the absence of any other direct reference, the connections between PISA and the D.Lgs 226/2005 have been analysed using the considerations which arose during this seminar.
25. For instance, Minister Fioroni modified legislative decree No. 286 March 25th 2004 concerning the reorganisation of INVALSI (for example, regarding management of the national evaluation system and student sampling in national surveys).
26. ‘Regolamento recante norme in materia di adempimento dell’obbligo di istruzione’.
28. It should also be noted that, in the national debate on the topic, PISA tests are usually considered relevant examples for the development of competencies at school (Castoldi Citation2009; Trinchero Citation2012).
29. ‘Conversione in legge, con modificazioni, del decreto-legge 25 giugno 2008, n. 112, recante disposizioni urgenti per lo sviluppo economico, la semplificazione, la competitività, la stabilizzazione della finanza pubblica e la perequazione tributaria’.
30. ‘Conversione in legge, con modificazioni, del decreto-legge 1° settembre 2008, n. 137, recante disposizioni urgenti in materia di istruzione e università’.
31. ‘Schema di regolamento recante norme concernenti il riordino degli istituti professionali ai sensi dell’articolo 64, comma 4, del decreto legge 25 giugno 2008, n. 112, convertito dalla legge 6 agosto 2008, n. 133’.
32. ‘Schema di regolamento recante norme per il riordino degli istituti tecnici a norma dell'articolo 64, comma 4, del decreto-legge 25 giugno 2008, n. 112, convertito, con modificazioni, dalla legge 6 agosto 2008, n. 133’.
33. ‘Schema di regolamento recante revisione dell'assetto ordinamentale, organizzativo e didattico dei licei a norma dell'articolo 64, comma 4, del decreto-legge 25 giugno 2008, n. 112, convertito, con modificazioni, dalla legge 6 agosto 2008, n. 133’.
34. Mathematising (and the related demand for mathematisation) is included in PISA 2012 as one of the fundamental mathematical capabilities and arises when the student ‘needs to interpret and infer directly from a given model, or to translate directly from a situation into mathematics […] to modify or use a given model to capture changed conditions or interpret inferred relationships; to choose a familiar model within limited and clearly articulated constraints; or to create a model where the required variables, relationships and constraints are explicit and clear. At an even higher level, the mathematisation demand is associated with the need to create or interpret a model in a situation where many assumptions, variables, relationships and constraints are to be identified or defined, and to check that the model satisfies the requirements of the task; or, to evaluate or compare models’ (OECD Citation2013, 44, 45).
35. Schema di regolamento recante Indicazioni nazionali riguardanti gli obiettivi specifici di apprendimento concernenti le attività e gli insegnamenti compresi nei piani degli studi previsti per i percorsi liceali di cui all’articolo 10, comma 3, del decreto del Presidente della Repubblica 15 marzo 2010, n. 89, in relazione all’articolo 2, commi 1 e3, del medesimo regolamento.
36. The research by Martens and Niemann analysed one national high-quality daily newspaper from 2001 to 2008.
37. The rationale of the convergence objective is to promote growth-enhancing conditions for the least-developed member states and regions (http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/archive/policy/object/index_en.htm).
38. The Funds are intended to reduce disparities in the development of the EU regions.
39. Convergence regions are defined as those regions having per capita gross domestic product (GDP) less than 75% of the average GDP of the EU-25 (Commission Decision C(2006)3475 of 4th August 2006). http://ec.europa.eu/research/index.cfm?pg=faq&idfaq=37004.
40. The resources allocated for the PON 2000–2006 amounted to 830 million euros and were used for several kinds of initiatives. In addition to the aforementioned reduction of drop-outs, early school leaving and development of key competencies in students, they included actions for ICT knowledge enhancement, youth mobility, training programmes to access the labour market, the development of lifelong learning activities, teacher training and the strengthening of gender equality and environmental awareness.
41. The PON ‘Competences for development’ was supported by the European Social Fund (ESF). The planning related to the educational and training systems sector, in the programming period 2007–2013, also included the PON ‘Learning environments’ (‘Ambienti per l’apprendimento’) initiative, supported by the European Fund for Regional Development (EFRD).
42. The National Evaluation System envisages building a team of ‘experts’ for school evaluation as well as teams of teachers with specific competencies for evaluation and assessment within each individual school.
43. FSE -2007-IT 05 1 PO 007 – Axe I – Human capital – Action B.3 ‘Actions related to learning process training and assessment’.
44. http://hubmiur.pubblica.istruzione.it/web/istruzione/pon/progetti_nazionali/pon_ocse_pisa; http://www.INVALSI.it/INVALSI/ri/pif/index.php.
45. Although some actions were later extended also to primary and the last years of upper secondary school teachers.
46. Cfr. INVALSI Citation2014a.
47. Comprehensive education lasts eight years, including primary and lower secondary education. Upper secondary education is divided into different tracks (and in separate schools).