An Analysis of the Performance of Italian Schools in Bebras and in the National Student Assessment INVALSI

This paper analyzes the results of the Bebras Challenge on Informatics and Computational Thinking held in Italy in the last three years and it compares them to the overall performance of Italian schools in the national INVALSI assessment of the standardized levels reached by students in Italian, Mathematics, and English. The main research question is if the mean regional performance at INVALSI tests can predict the performance of schools of the same region in the Bebras challenge. The answer is positive at the grossest level: macro regional areas with INVALSI results below the national average tend to perform worse also in the Bebras challenge. At regional level, a high correlation between Bebras and INVALSI was found among the regions whose results differ significantly