country where territorial and gender gaps are also evident in mathematical and scientific skills.
We do not reach the standards of Asian mathematical ‘brains’, but in general our country defends itself both in mathematics and in science. Unfortunately, we continue to deal with profound differences between males and females and between North and South.
This is what emerges from the IEA TIMSS 2023 survey, just presented by the Invalsi institute, which highlights the problems we still have to solve with regard to the training of our young people in the crucial STEM area.
The research, which takes place every four years, is the longest-running comparative study on the subject internationally, having begun back in 1995. Italy, which has been participating since the beginning of the surveys, in 2023 involved over 4,000 fourth-grade pupils and as many eighth-grade pupils (thus reaching, overall, around 8 thousand), concentrating as per tradition on two disciplines: mathematics and science. The portal Skuola.net has explored it in detail.
The first report after the pandemic
The report presented this year, relating to 2023 data, marks the first cycle of TIMSS carried out after the pandemic, following the previous one in 2019. Thus, although the research – as the statisticians specify – was not designed to scientifically examine the impact of the pandemic, it is still possible to detect some trends. Which are not as obvious as one might imagine: we need to analyze the data carefully to notice the repercussions of school closures on the math and science skills of Italian students. Because, often, it is precisely the most “fragile” students who pay the price of difficult periods.
Italians and science, the problem is the internal “difference in height”
The result, at a global level, of the countries of East Asia is incredible: Singapore even obtains a score above 600 in both subjects, with an international average for both mathematics and science of about 500. Far from competing with these goals, however, Italian students, all in all, do better in mathematics than one might believe.
In fact, in fourth grade they reach an average score of 513, higher than the international average (503), although slightly below the EU average score (526). In the eighth grade, the performance of Italian students is 501, remaining higher than the international one of 478 and in line with that of EU countries. The drop that can be seen in the score of Italian students from primary school to lower secondary school, moreover, is also observed in the EU average.
In science, on the other hand, Italian students who attend the fourth class of primary school get a score of 511. Also in this case they do better than the remaining countries on a global scale, whose average stops at 494, but do a little worse than the countries of the EU area, where the average jumps to 520. With the transition to the eighth grade, as we have seen for mathematics, the performance of Italian students worsens from 511 to 501, in line with what happens in EU countries, whose average goes from 520 to 506.
So far so good, or so it seems. Because digging deeper, it can be seen that there are differences between the Italian geographical areas, already present in the fourth primary school: in mathematics, in fact, about 50 points separate the average score obtained by students in the North-West (530, the highest result) from that obtained in the South-Islands area (480, the lowest result). Also as far as mastery of science is concerned, the two areas are at the extremes of the distribution: the North-West stands out with an average of 529, the South-Islands stops at 479, a good 50 points difference.
The situation does not change when we move on to analyze the eighth grade: the score of the South-Islands macro-area in mathematics drops to 460, as does that of the South geographical area (from 502 to 489), in both cases being lower than those of the North-West and North-East (515 and 521 respectively).
For science, even in the eighth year of schooling, students from the North-West and North-East (517 and 523 points on average) obtain higher results than students from the South and South-Islands (484 and 459).
And if the discrepancies between macro-areas increase, it is also worrying how much variability in the data there is between the different geographical areas. Because perhaps the most striking thing is that you can calculate almost 300 points of difference between the students who achieve the lowest results in mathematics and those who achieve the best results. This happens, for example, in the eighth grade, where the minimum score reached in the South-Islands is just over 300 points; while the maximum, in the North-West, reaches almost 650.
How things have changed between pre and post-pandemic
Wanting, on the other hand, to make a “historical” comparison, as far as mathematics in fourth primary is concerned, we see that looking at the average figure there were no major differences compared to 2019, therefore to the pre-covid year, nor compared to the immediately preceding cycles. Same thing for the eighth grade.
What is, so to speak, more “hidden” concerns the breadth of the gap between those who obtained higher scores and those who, on the other hand, obtained the lower ones. In fact, even if the average score does not change, in 2019 there were fewer points of detachment between the best and the least good: in the post-pandemic period the gap has increased by almost 50 points.
Similar situation with regard to science: for the fourth primary, at the level of average score, the data show that in the last two cycles there are no statistically significant differences. But, even in this case, the comparison made on the extent of variability within geographical areas, between the lowest and highest levels, although slightly smaller than for mathematics in Italy, widens in the post-pandemic period.
Girls lagging behind in mathematics and science, the Italian “gender gap”
At the gender level, the international picture tells us that in mathematics in most countries differences tend to persist, in favor of children. Which, however, decrease with the increase in school grade, so they are stronger in the fourth primary and attenuate in the eighth year of school. In science, the situation is somewhat different: in a greater number of countries the differences are not significant, and there are countries in which girls outnumber boys in a more balanced way than in mathematics.
In Italy, however, we have a sad condition: in both disciplinary areas and for both school grades, male students achieve superior results compared to girls.
In comparison with other EU countries, the differences in mathematics are particularly evident, both in the fourth primary and in the eighth grade. Although, in fact, in the latter the disparities tend to reduce in Italy as well, the decrease is not as significant. In science, while at EU level the gender gap is practically non-existent, in Italy there remains a difference of about 9 or 10 points.
And as seen for the gap between “first and last in the class”, wider after Covid, it seems that the pandemic has had the consequence of worsening the condition of those who are in a condition of fragility. As for gender differences, in 2019 they were narrowing, but today they have widened again, reaching up to 16 points of gap (in eighth grade for mathematics).