No. 122 - Human capital for growth: possible steps towards an upgrade of the Italian education system

The problems of Italy's education system mostly stem from its modus operandi and interactions with the expectations of families and students. The recent signs of improvement in Italian students' proficiency, plausibly reflecting greater emphasis on rigour, could be reinforced by making schools more autonomous and accountable, including in matters of staff management, and with a nationwide programme of support for the schools in greatest difficulty. The cost savings obtained over the years should mostly be reinvested into the system, enhancing teachers' professionalism. In higher education, the increasing supply of degree courses has not affected the typical problems of Italy's public universities, which: still attract few researchers and students from abroad; are too undifferentiated and unspecialized; have a predominantly local teacher and student base. The renewal begun with the recent university reform, which has challenged the historically self-referential governance of the system, must stimulate more internal competition within the Italian university system with well-defined and stable rules to foster quality and reward merit, and it must also allow individual universities more autonomy so that a more differentiated supply structure can emerge.