Over the past twenty years, direct testing of reading comprehension, logical and mathematical skills, and the ability to combine pieces of information to solve problems of varying complexity, reveals a similarly worrying picture. At the end of primary school Italian students are at least as skilled as in the other developed countries, but in the later stages of formal education they fall behind.
For 15-year-olds, the gap found by the PISA survey carried out by the OECD in 2006 corresponded to around one school year; and although this diminished between 2006 and 2009, it remained significant. The gap reflects severe disparities between different parts of Italy, with the scores in the North slightly above the OECD average and those in the South dramatically lower.