Conference Program

Lower secondary school represents the final stage of the Italian education system in which social classes, gender, and citizenship backgrounds remain relatively mixed. With the transition to upper secondary education, however, a process of differentiation begins - more or less explicit - giving rise to various forms of “educational streaming.”

These streaming processes - or, in some cases, actual segregation - intersect with inequalities in learning and educational outcomes and simultaneously reinforce them. The result is an implicitly hierarchical upper secondary education system, structured into studies perceived (by teachers, families, and public opinion) as first-, second-, and third-tier options or, alternatively, as intended for students considered “more or less capable,” “native or foreign,” or “male or female.” Within this framework, both explicit and implicit selection mechanisms operate, active at entry and throughout school , formally justified by academic performance but often intertwined with social, cultural, or undeclared criteria. Academic performance itself, as widely recognized, is frequently influenced by students’ socio-economic and cultural backgrounds.

The streaming that occurs at the end of the first education cycle thus acts as a telling indicator of the persistent selective structure Italian secondary education, which still remains far from fully achieving the principles of equity, inclusion, and effectiveness enshrined in Articles 3 and 34 of the Italian Constitution.

The contribution aims to outline a comprehensive picture of these dynamics through the integrated analysis of multiple sources and datasets, examined from diachronic and longitudinal perspectives, across geographical areas and in relation to the different upper secondary studies. The paper also advances several proposals in terms of policies and actions. The proposed contribution is based on a methodology for data extraction, processing, and interpretation aimed at monitoring school dropouts at the local level, developed and tested by Oxfam Italy in five different school systems and, vertically, in fifteen lower and upper secondary schools.

The primary focus is on the secondary education segment (lower and upper secondary levels). By combining data on explicit and implicit dropouts, the study seeks to provide a detailed overview of inequalities in learning and outcomes, highlighting how structural and contextual factors interact in shaping educational results.

Among the research hypotheses to be explored through data analysis are:

• the “ambivalent” relationship between explicit and implicit dropouts: does reducing predictive events associated with explicit dropouts (failures, grade repetition, delays, changing schools) - and therefore lowering the risk of early school leaving - necessarily lead to lower levels of learning and competencies?
• the “pyramidal” configuration and persistent selective structure of upper secondary education - from the academic high school track, including internal differentiation, to vocational education - appear confirmed by a wide range of data. The hypothesis is that this structure produces “mirror effects,” both ex ante (in school choices) and ex post (in labor market stratification);
• do streaming processes already emerge at entry and become consolidated throughout the school? What relationship exists between educational streaming and school dropouts? The proposed hypothesis is that each school’s “positioning” within the system contributes, in a circular manner, to reinforcing both streaming processes and dropouts.