The indicators

The Commission has selected 78 statistical indicators to measure educational poverty.

At the territorial level, the intersection between region and the degree of urbanisation of the municipality is considered. The Degree of Urbanisation (DEGURBA) classification, developed by Eurostat in collaboration with the OECD, was used; this distinguishes between cities, small towns and suburbs, and sparsely populated areas.

This resulted in the identification of 62 territorial units of analysis (19 regions and 2 autonomous provinces broken down by 3 degrees of urbanisation, with the exception of Valle d’Aosta, where there are no municipalities classified as towns).

The indicators were designed and calculated as measures of deprivation with the aim of providing an overview of situations of hardship in terms of resources and outcomes simply by examining the individual indicators in the data matrix.

The following data sources were used to calculate the indicators: administrative data (surveys by the Ministry of Education and Merit, SIAE), census-based surveys (INVALSI and Istat surveys: Survey on the Integration of Pupils with Disabilities, Survey on Early Childhood Educational Services, Survey on Libraries, and Survey on Museums and Similar Institutions), the Statistical Register of Non-Profit Organisations, and five Istat sample surveys: the Multi-purpose Survey on Aspects of Daily Life (AVQ), the Survey on Living Conditions (Eu-SILC), the Labour Force Survey (FdL), the Citizens and Leisure Survey (CTL), and the Children and Young People: Behaviours, Attitudes and Future Plans Survey (B&R).

For indicators calculated on the basis of sample survey results, for which the cross-tabulation of region by DEGURBA is not a planned estimation domain, Istat calculated direct estimates, to which the DAGUM Centre – a member institution of the Commission – applied small-area estimation methods in order to improve their accuracy.

Starting from the 78 indicators, composite indices were constructed to summarise the information and map the national territory. The method used is the Adjusted Mazziotta-Pareto Index (AMPI).

Seven composite indices have been calculated: one for the ‘outcomes’ domain, one for the ‘resources’ domain, and five intermediate indices covering the family, school, local, social and cultural contexts, as well as cognitive, personal and social skills.

The indices vary approximately within the range 70–130, with a base value of 100 representing the Italian average. Local areas with values above 100 show a situation that is relatively worse than the national average, whilst those with values below 100, conversely, show a situation that is relatively better.