Invalsi 2024: good in English, bad in mathematics and with drops in Italian

The disaster is in the middle, in middle schools. This is what the Invalsi data say, those of the common tests that are done in the different levels of education. There is an improvement in the almost half a million students who have just taken the final exam. Final year students have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels, but there is an improvement in Italian compared to previous years with an increase in the presence of excellent students and a decrease in fragile ones, who reach graduation with gaps in the main subjects.

In middle school, however, there is a general worsening. Among 14-year-olds, the problem is mathematics, especially in the South, but also in a general way due to the shortage of teachers. In some of the southern regions, Basilicata, Calabria, Sicily and Sardinia, 60 percent of eighth-grade middle school students do not reach a passing grade. However, the level of English is improving. In Italian, only 60 percent reach a passing grade, two percentage points less than last year, 5 compared to before the pandemic. In Italian, students in the North and Center have decreased. In the South, the data were already very poor: one student in two reaches the diploma with inadequate Italian skills.

The comparison of primary school results over time highlights in the second year of primary school, from 2023 to 2024, a decrease in the percentage of male and female students who reach at least the expected basic level in Italian (69% in 2023; 67% in 2024), while in Mathematics a slight recovery is observed from 2023 to 2024 (64% in 2023; 67% in 2024). In fifth grade, however, both in Italian (74% in 2023; 75% in 2024) and in Mathematics (63% in 2023; 68% in 2024) the percentage of students who reach the basic level increases and in Mathematics it even exceeds the percentage of 2022.

It remains a national problem, that ofequity of teachingwhich is not there. There is too much disparity by area, by teacher, by section and by subject and this leads some of the students, who were not placed in the lucky section, to not have the same opportunities as others, especially for mathematics. Girls are the ones who struggle in this subject. The data on English is improving, even the starting level is at a low level and there are differences between reading and listening skills which are much lower.

At the age of graduation, 56 percent of students pass in Italian and 52 percent in mathematics. Before Covid, the data was 64 and 61 percent. Despite this, Education Minister Giuseppe Valditara says he is satisfied: “The results of the Invalsi tests show a significant improvement starting from primary school. These signs of improvement come for some particularly sensitive issues that have always seen us at the bottom of the international rankings and see the beginning of a turning point”.

There is one piece of data that appears positive. The number of students who do not achieve a passing grade in all three subjects has decreased: that is, what is called “implicit dispersion” has decreased.». They dropped from 8.7 percent to 6.6 percent. They remain above 10 in Campania and Sardinia. The president of Invalsi Roberto Ricci explains: «They are mostly males who risk, also because of their fragility in fundamental skills, not being able to become citizens in the full sense of the word, that of rights and unfortunately also that of duties». In more than twenty years, explicit dropout, that is, those who fail to finish their studies, has also decreased: it has more than halved from 2001 to 2023, reaching 10.5 percent.