Pisa Scores Show Italy Above Average, and a Gap That Follows the South

Italian students performed above the international average in maths, reading and science in the latest OECD Programme for International Student Assessment, The Local Italy reported, at a moment when many other countries recorded sharp declines. The same survey found a large and persistent gap between Italian and non-Italian students, a divide the foreign press treats as one of the country's structural education problems.

The headline result is a rare piece of good news in a run of coverage that has otherwise dwelt on Italian decline. The Local's account does not attribute the divergence to any single cause, and it reports the non-Italian gap as a standing feature rather than a new development.