A multi-criteria approach for ranking Italian high schools

Multi-criteria decision making is a useful tool for economic applications, especially in the last decade. We investigate and compare the performance of Italian public high schools. We consider three outputs provided by average students’ school and academic performance, and school characteristics. Our sample includes 263 high schools (HS) in all Italian Regions, grouped into 6 types and 3 geographic areas. Employing specific weights for the outputs, we apply PROMETHEE to derive the ranking of different types of schools by geographic area. Then we apply ELECTRE III to the same problem and compare the results with those obtained using PROMETHEE. Our results show that: (a) there are significant differences between HS according to school and academic performance; (b) Classic and Scientific Lyceums are the best types of school regardless of geographic area; (c) by simultaneously considering type of school and geographic area, southern HS seem to have better performances than northern ones.