The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) documents, at each round, that 15-year-old Italian students fall below the OECD average in reading, mathematics and science – a disappointing outcome for a country that would need to grow faster that the main advanced economies in order to catch up their level of income per capita (slide 6).
An in-depth look at the latest data (for the year 2018) shows that this dismal performance is largely the result of the delays in Italy’s Mezzogiorno: while the North-West and the North-East of the country perform above the OECD average, the South and the Islands fall worryingly below (slide 7). 16. These gaps translate into analogous gaps for Italian adults.