The upper secondary private schools: New perspectives in light of 2019 invalsi data
Andrea Bendinelli, Angela Martini
Italy is one of the few countries where, on the basis of PISA surveys, private schools have worse performances than public schools, playing in the education system a «remedial» role. However, a recent study, based on the waves 2009, 2012 and 2015 of PISA tests scores, has questioned this assumption, highlighting the existence of heterogeneous performances in the private sector depending on the type, confessional or not confessional, of the school. Following the suggestion of this study, the present work analyzes the results of 2019 INVALSY survey on the competencies in Italian and Mathematics of students attending the second class of the upper secondary school in each of three categories of schools: state schools, private confessional schools and private non-confessional schools. The results of INVALSI tests are analyzed a first time without controlling for student variables such as socio-demographic characteristics and prior attainment — variables that differ from one category of schools to another — and a second time under control of these variables by means of a multilevel regression model. The results of the analyzes on one side confirm the existence of heterogeneity in student outcomes within the private educational sector in Italy and on the other side show that, when controlling for student variables, the performance differences between the three categories of schools tend to be cancelled out or reduced consistently.
Keywords
Public and private education, confessional and non-confessional schools, 2019 INVALSI tests, heterogeneity in the private educational sector, multilevel regression models.