SCHOOL AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE FOR RANKING HIGH SCHOOLS: SOME EVIDENCE FROM ITALY

This paper aims to investigate and compare the performance of Italian public high schools (HS) to provide a ranking among different typologies of HS. In this paper, seven criteria that refer to students’ school and academic performance were considered. The sample includes 263 high schools in all Italian regions, grouped into 6 different types of schools and 3 geographic areas. Assuming that all criteria have the same weights, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was applied to derive the ranking among the typologies of schools both at a national level and within each geographic area. The main results show that there are significant differences between HS according to criteria related to school and academic performance both within and between geographic areas. The ranking does not vary, but the intensity of preferences may be different according to the area and/or the criterion considered. The application of PROMETHEE to the same problem confirms the results obtained by the AHP.