The widespread consensus towards meritocracy is historically linked to the belief that the educational system, as the primary driver of social mobility, is capable of transcending ascribed conditions and rewarding achievement through a meritocratic selection (Parsons, 1970; Bell, 1972). However, the thesis that society is progressively transforming into an education-based meritocracy has been widely challenged by numerous studies emphasising the influence of socio-economic background on educational results and trajectories (Goldthorpe 2008; Martins & Veiga, 2010; Barone & Ruggera, 2015; Bernardi & Ballarino, 2016; Giancola & Salmieri, 2022).

In this regard, the latest data from Istat show that in Italy, 67.6% of individuals with at least one parent holding a tertiary degree attain a university degree, while in families with at least one parent holding a high school degree, this percentage decreases to 39.1%, dropping further to 12.3% when parents have at most a lower secondary education level (Istat, 2023).

Despite this evidence, in the contemporary collective imaginary, the idea that schools provide equal opportunities to students, regardless of their socio-economic conditions, is increasingly widespread and those who achieve academic success are considered deserving of occupying the highest social positions (Barone, 2012; Darnon et al., 2018; Kuppens et al., 2018; Boarelli, 2019;). In this perspective, meritocracy has been considered a powerful ideology that legitimises and reproduces social inequalities, transforming social privilege into merit (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1964; Barone, 2012; Brigati, 2015; Cingari, 2015; Littler, 2017; McNamee, 2018; Sandel, 2020).

To better understand the mechanisms underlying adherence to meritocracy, over the last decade, a large body of research has investigated the so-called subjective aspects of meritocracy, distinguishing between descriptive and prescriptive value of meritocratic beliefs, corresponding to individual perceptions and preferences regarding the social order (Castillo et al., 2019). Most of these studies have relied on data collected during the five editions of the survey on social inequalities of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) (ISSP Research group, 2022) and have explored the relationship between meritocratic beliefs and individuals' positions in the social structure (Duru-Bellat & Tenret, 2012; Tenret, 2014; Reynolds & Xian, 2014; García-Sánchez et al., 2019; Mijs, 2021; Batruch et al., 2023;).

With the aim of analysing the Italian context, still relatively unexplored in the national and international scientific literature, the present contribution investigates the meritocratic perceptions and preferences of the population and the importance attributed to education as a merit element, examining their trends over the past decades. The analysis has been carried out on data collected in Italy within the surveys on social inequalities of ISSP in 2009 and 2019 will be presented (ISSP Research group, 2022). Results highlight the coexistence of both meritocratic and non-meritocratic elements in individual perceptions regarding what people need to get ahead in Italy, the increase in preferences for an education-based meritocracy, the strong association between perceived and desired meritocracy, and variations in meritocratic beliefs based on gender, age, perceived social class, and educational level.