Does class matter more than school? Evidence from a multilevel statistical analysis on Italian junior secondary school students

• Multilevel linear models applied to the administrative database on pupils' achievements
• Big discrepancies elapse between the three geographical macro-areas: North, Center and South of Italy.
• Attending certain schools but especially certain classes influence the students' performances.
• Identification of certain students' characteristics that are associated with students' achievements.

This paper assesses the differences in educational attainments between students across classes and schools they are grouped by, in the context of Italian educational system. The purpose is to identify a relationship between pupils' reading test scores and students' characteristics, stratifying for classes, schools and geographical areas. The dataset contains detailed information about more than 500,000 students at the first year of junior secondary school in the year 2012/2013. By means of multilevel linear models, it is possible to estimate statistically significant school and class effects, after adjusting for pupil's characteristics, including prior achievement. The results show that school and class effects are very heterogeneous across macro-areas (Northern, Central and Southern Italy), and that there are substantial discrepancies between and within schools; overall, class effects on achievement tend to be larger than school ones.