Evaluating Schools: The Italian Way

In many European countries, the instruments for evaluating schools were in place well before school autonomy reform in Europe in the 1990s. Italy, however, developed its evaluation of the school system in the context of this process towards the end of the 1990s. This means that, in order to counterbalance the autonomy that was given to schools, the Italian central administration needed to introduce some models of quality control of local communities. In this context, the evaluation of the Italian school system has developed only since 1997. Furthermore, given the frequent changes of Italian government, this development has not been easy. About ten years on, the INValSI (National Institute for the Evaluation of School System) - an Institution under the control of the Minister of Education - is a “weak structure”, which is still being defined and integrated into the Italian school system. At the present time, INValSI can assure only an external value-added evaluation of schools by means of performance testing of curricular contents (Italian & Math). Tests are distributed to each student attending 2nd and 5th grades in primary schools, 3rd grade in the middle school, 1st grade in high school, during the last month (May) of each school year. Other forms of evaluation (i.e. internal, self, etc) are not in place, or planned. In this situation, several critical points can be considered: 1. The Ministerial nature of INValSI; 2. Feedback from external evaluation is very generic/non-specific, without any suggestions to help schools to plug gaps or improve, or any consequences for badly performing schools; 3. Can we evaluate school quality by means of performance-testing curricular content only? Is it only between these boundaries that we can define the quality of a school? Considerations in reference to this situation could be: The defects of our evaluation system are evident. At the same time, we are also aware that, in this particularly critical moment, the Italian government does not have the resources to invest in and improve the National system. However, from an “educational” point of view, we need to explore other directions, different from the use of performance testing only to evaluate school quality. Between other ways and perspectives, I think we have to pay more attention to school stakeholder voices: they are the best sources of information for decision-making about school quality. In this last perspective I would open a discussion.