Individual and Context Variables Effects on SchoolPerformances. A Multilevel Analysis on Italian UpperSecondary Students.Outputs in the Italian Case

This paper analyses inequalities in education and, in particular, the factors of social origin and school context that may influence the educational performance of Italian upper secondary school students. The study is based on data collected by OECD-PISA in 2018 and refers to performance differences in Reading. The main objective is to identify the determinants and mechanisms underlying the differences in these performances, assessing not only the impacts due to individual or ascriptive features such as gender and family backgrounds, but also the role played by contextual variables along students' careers (socio-economic and cultural contexts, school-tracks, and school composition). These are two different sets of influence, reflecting the hierarchical nature of the data. For this reason, the analyses have been carried out in two different steps. Firstly, student' individual and contextual features are analysed not considering the hierarchical nature of the data. Secondly, a multilevel methodology was adopted to identify differences among schools and within each school. Results stemming from the analyses are part of a broader research project on students' expectations and life courses.