Inequality in education: can Italian disadvantaged students close the gap? A focus on resilience in the Italian school system

The relationship between socio-economic status and student achievement is well documented and a widespread literature indicates that students from more advantaged backgrounds perform better at school. Despite this relationship, several international assessments have highlighted that in each country there is a relevant proportion of “resilient students”, i.e. students who come from a disadvantaged socio-economic background but achieve relatively high levels of educational performance. In this paper, the determinants of resilience in the Italian educational system are investigated analysing data from the OECD-PISA 2009 edition, with a specific focus on the role of school-level variables that could help more students succeed. The aim is to target a specific category of resilient students, namely those who are characterised by a low socioeconomic background both at family level and at school level; therefore a novel statistical procedure is proposed to derive a sample of disadvantaged students who attend disadvantaged schools. Afterwards a multilevel logistic approach is adopted to determine which characteristics of students, families and schools, tend to give disadvantaged students a higher probability of becoming a resilient. Our results confirm that not only individual-level characteristics, but also some school factors (i.e. extracurricular activities and school leadership) play a role in this direction, suggesting policy and managerial implications

Poverty measures to analyse the educational inequality in the OECD Countries

This paper studies the degree of educational poverty in OECD countries on the basis of last edition (2015) of OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The definition of 'poor in education', in terms of PISA data, refers to the students below the baseline level of proficiency that is required to participate fully in society. We adopt both one-dimensional and multidimensional approach to measure poverty in education. In this light, the educational poverty is analysed by the poverty metrics developed by Foster, Greer and Thorbecke and those proposed by Alkire and Foster. The main results of our analysis provide a detailed picture of the degree of poverty relative to student learning in OECD countries, and they can be considered an analytical tool to improve the quality of educational systems

Exploring the determinants and trends of STEM students' internal mobility. Some evidence from Italy

In recent years, there has been a widespread consensus that science, tech- nology, engineering and math (STEM) education is crucial for the long-term productivity and growth of a country. In this light, the present paper aims to explore the phenomenon of the mobility of Italian STEM students, namely, the ows of graduated students from the Southern regions who enrol in the universities in the Northern/Central area and choose a STEM degree course. We exploit microdata from the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) on 8 cohorts (from a.y. 2008/2009 to a.y. 2015/16) of enrolled students in STEM elds who obtained high school diplomas in Southern Italy. The main results of our analysis show that the ow of STEM movers increases from year to year. This ow particularly aects the top- performing students and, therefore, is a threat to the socio-economic growth prospects of the Southern regions whose gap with respect to the Central and Northern regions is expected to grow year by year

Measuring the impact of financial crisis on quality of life in Europe

Improving and monitoring Quality of Life is becoming one of the most important goals of European Union policies. However, its measurement is complex and multi-faceted, as an individual's current and future state of wellbeing depends upon a great number of variables. Moreover, there is no doubt that crisis impacted differentially in European countries. Against this background, the aim of this article is to provide a better understanding of the changes in quality of life in European countries and the role of receiving contexts in influencing these outcomes. In order to achieve it, the paper proposes a multidimensional and fuzzy approach to measure Quality of Life and investigate the evolution of different dimensions of quality life over time by use a propensity score method for isolating the effect of crisis from the net change

Mitochondrial Damage in the Trabecular Meshwork Occurs Only in Primary Open-Angle Glaucoma and in Pseudoexfoliative Glaucoma

Open-angle glaucoma appears to be induced by the malfunction of the trabecular meshwork cells due to injury induced by oxidative damage and mitochondrial impairment. Here, we report that, in fact, we have detected mitochondrial damage only in primary open-angle glaucoma and pseudo-exfoliation glaucoma, among several glaucoma types compared.Mitochondrial damage was evaluated by analyzing the common mitochondrial DNA deletion by real-time PCR in trabecular meshwork specimens collected at surgery from glaucomatous patients and controls. Glaucomatous patients included 38 patients affected by various glaucoma types: primary open-angle, pigmented, juvenile, congenital, pseudoexfoliative, acute, neovascular, and chronic closed-angle glaucoma. As control samples, we used 16 specimens collected from glaucoma-free corneal donors. Only primary open-angle glaucoma (3.0-fold) and pseudoexfoliative glaucoma (6.3-fold) showed significant increases in the amount of mitochondrial DNA deletion. In all other cases, deletion was similar to controls.despite the fact that the trabecular meshwork is the most important tissue in the physiopathology of aqueous humor outflow in all glaucoma types, the present study provides new information regarding basic physiopathology of this tissue: only in primary open-angle and pseudoexfoliative glaucomas oxidative damage arising from mitochondrial failure play a role in the functional decay of trabecular meshwork

Trabecular Meshwork Gene Expression after Selective Laser Trabeculoplasty

BACKGROUND: Trabecular meshwork and Schlemm's canal are the tissues appointed to modulate the aqueous humour outflow from the anterior chamber. The impairment of their functions drives to an intraocular pressure increase. The selective laser trabeculoplasty is a laser therapy of the trabecular meshwork able to decrease intraocular pressure. The exact response mechanism to this treatment has not been clearly delineated yet. The herein presented study is aimed at studying the gene expression changes induced in trabecular meshwork cells by selective laser trabeculoplasty (SLT) in order to better understand the mechanisms subtending its efficacy. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Primary human trabecular meshwork cells cultured in fibroblast medium underwent selective laser trabeculoplasty treatment. RNA was extracted from a pool of cells 30 minutes after treatment while the remaining cells were further cultured and RNA was extracted respectively 2 and 6 hours after treatment. Control cells stored in incubator in absence of SLT treatment were used as reference samples. Gene expression was evaluated by hybridization on miRNA-microarray and laser scanner analysis. Scanning electron microscopic examination was performed on 2 Trabecular meshwork samples after SLT at 4(th) and 6(th) hour from treatment. On the whole, selective laser trabeculoplasty modulates in trabecular meshwork the expression of genes involved in cell motility, intercellular connections, extracellular matrix production, protein repair, DNA repair, membrane repair, reactive oxygen species production, glutamate toxicity, antioxidant activities, and inflammation. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: SLT did not induce any phenotypic alteration in TM samples. TM is a complex tissue possessing a great variety of function pivotal for the active regulation of aqueous humour outflow from the anterior chamber. SLT is able to modulate these functions at the postgenomic molecular level without inducing damage either at molecular or phenotypic levels

The wide-field, multiplexed, spectroscopic facility WEAVE: Survey design, overview, and simulated implementation

WEAVE, the new wide-field, massively multiplexed spectroscopic survey facility for the William Herschel Telescope, will see first light in late 2022. WEAVE comprises a new 2-degree field-of-view prime-focus corrector system, a nearly 1000-multiplex fibre positioner, 20 individually deployable 'mini' integral field units (IFUs), and a single large IFU. These fibre systems feed a dual-beam spectrograph covering the wavelength range 366−959\,nm at R∼5000, or two shorter ranges at R∼20000. After summarising the design and implementation of WEAVE and its data systems, we present the organisation, science drivers and design of a five- to seven-year programme of eight individual surveys to: (i) study our Galaxy's origins by completing Gaia's phase-space information, providing metallicities to its limiting magnitude for ∼3 million stars and detailed abundances for ∼1.5 million brighter field and open-cluster stars; (ii) survey ∼0.4 million Galactic-plane OBA stars, young stellar objects and nearby gas to understand the evolution of young stars and their environments; (iii) perform an extensive spectral survey of white dwarfs; (iv) survey ∼400 neutral-hydrogen-selected galaxies with the IFUs; (v) study properties and kinematics of stellar populations and ionised gas in z1 million spectra of LOFAR-selected radio sources; (viii) trace structures using intergalactic/circumgalactic gas at z>2. Finally, we describe the WEAVE Operational Rehearsals using the WEAVE Simulator

Educational institutions, resources, and students' resiliency: An empirical study about OECD countries

This paper uses the OECD-PISA 2009 data for studying the factors associated with the probability of poor students being resilient, i.e. obtaining good test scores despite their disadvantaged socioeconomic background. The results reveal that not only students' individual characteristics matter, indeed a positive school climate is statistically associated with resiliency; also, educational systems that invest more resources and postpone tracking may help disadvantaged students to overcome their unfavourable background and promote higher equality of opportunities

Inequality in education: Can Italian disadvantaged students close the gap?

tThe relationship between socio-economic status and school achievement is well documented and exten-sive literature indicates that students from more advantaged backgrounds perform better at school.Despite this relationship, several international assessments have highlighted that in every country thereare a relevant number of “resilient students”, i.e. students from a disadvantaged socio-economic back-ground who achieve relatively high levels of performance in terms of education. In this paper, thedeterminants of resilience in the Italian educational system are investigated through the analysis of datafrom the OECD-PISA 2009 cycle, with a specific focus on the role of school-level variables that couldhelp more students perform to a higher standard. The aim is to target a specific category of resilient stu-dents, namely those from a low socio-economic background at both family and school level, proposing aninnovative statistical procedure to derive a sample of disadvantaged students attending disadvantagedschools. After this, a multilevel logistic approach is adopted to determine which specific characteristicsof students, families and schools tend to give disadvantaged students a higher probability of becom-ing resilient students. Our results confirm that individual-level characteristics play a role, but also thatsome school factors (i.e. extra-curricular activities and school leadership) are equally involved, suggestingpolicy- and management-related implications