Italian education

EVALUATION AND ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORK

The Italian situation

What is evaluation?

Evaluate something mean to estimate the fulfillment of objectives, the quality of an activity or establish if the activities and the process are part of some standards.

Evaluate is important to establish the quality of a process if the activities are right to achieving the objectives, in other words, if what we are doing it's coherent for what planned.

The utility of evaluating is in the fact that is not a process useful only at the end of an action, it's a process that shows his worth in every phase of a project.

At the beginning of a project, evaluate gives information about what is useful or not for the aims; during the project is important for know if the project is going on the right direction, if is close to the objectives or if something needs to be changing. Finally, evaluate the end of a project is useful for helping us to know what we can improve and what are the project strengths.

Education is one of the most important projects in human activities, for this reason, it is important to evaluate the educational system who has the aim to provide skills and knowledge for living in our changing society.

The majority part of the countries strives for improving the own educational system using tools like evaluation and assessment. The results provide from those precious instruments, are useful for the policymaker to gain information about the efficacy of schools, teacher and study programs and for have feedback for improving the system.

Despite those important aspects, not every country implements a good evaluation of the educational system. The reasons are different: poor policy design, lack to put the procedure into practice or lack to a correct analysis of the evaluation's results (OECV review of evaluation and assessment in Education, "Synergies for better learning" an international perspective on evaluation and assessment, 2013).

In my opinion, education is the better way to improving our society, for being a better world citizen, in other words, to bring a change in a world who need it. Pay attention to the evaluation system means to take care of the way where we are going to, means take care of our children's future: too much for not consider it.

In this paper, I will introduce the Italian educational system, my country, and the way whit Italian policymakers evaluate it, and the consequence for the quality in Italian education.

The Italian educational system

The education system is organized as follows:

1. Pre-primary school (Scuola dell'infanzia) for children between 3 and 6 years of age;

2. The first cycle of education lasting 8 years, made up of:

- primary school (lasting 5 years), for children between 6 and 11 years of age;

- lower secondary school (lasting 3 years) for children between 11 and 14 years of age;

3. The second cycle of education offering two different pathways:

- state upper secondary school (lasting 5 years) for students from 14 to 19 years of age, offered by licei, technical and vocational institutes;

- three and four-year vocational training courses (IFP). It is organized by the Regions.

4. Post-secondary non-tertiary education offered through:

- post-qualification and post-diploma vocational courses organized by the Regions;

- higher technical education and training courses (IFTS).

5. Higher education offered by:

- universities (polytechnics included)

- institutes of the Higher Education in Art and Music (Alta formazione artistica e musicale - AFAM)

- Higher Technical institutes (ITS)

- other higher specialized institutions

Education is free and open to everyone. School education is compulsory for ten years, between the ages of 6 and 16. This covers the whole of the first cycle of education, which lasts eight years (five years of primary school and three years of lower secondary school) and the first two years of the second cycle (DM 139/2007).

The evaluation task is divided into two different levels:

• The school-level relies on the School manager and the teacher's assembly who have the aim to assure the quality assurance as quality and efficacy of education.

• The educational system level relies on the National Institute for the Evaluation of the Education System (INVALSI). This institute is submitted by the Ministry of education, university and research (MIUR) that every year select the objective for the external school evaluation and every tree year select the priority for the INVALSI school evaluation.

All the courses organized by the regions (as vocational training courses) are evaluated by the National reference Point established at the National Institute for the analysis of public policies (INAPP) in 2006.

The three most important agencies for the assurance of the education quality are:

• INVALSI, who prepare tests for the external evaluation of learner in every educational level and takes part of an international survey;

• INDIRE the National Institute of documentation, innovation, and research in education, who takes care of the improving of the educational system;

• INSPECTORS autonomous and independent that evaluate schools and school managers.

The evaluation in higher education has been introduced in 2010 in compliance whit the European standards. The quality assurance relies on the ANVUR (National agency for the evaluation of University and research system) who is promoted by the MIUR (European Commission/ EACEA National Policies Platforms/Eurydice, 2019).

Characteristics of the Italian education system

The Italian’s students in the scholastic year 2018/2019 are 7.682.635 with 370.611 classes.

The following table represents all the Italian students divided into region, class, and students whit disability.

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