Bridging or Widening the Gap? High School Resources and Achievement Gaps Across Migration Backgrounds in Italy

This study examines the role of school-level resources in shaping achievement gaps between students with and without a migration background in early upper secondary education in Italy. It distinguishes between second-generation and newly arrived migrant students, exploring how educational resources may mitigate disparities in academic performance across migration backgrounds. Using a unique longitudinal dataset that merges PISA school-level information with INVALSI student-level data from Grades 8 and 10, the study addresses a key limitation of previous research by controlling for students’ prior performance, enabling a more reliable evaluation of how migration-related gaps unfold over academic trajectories. The analysis employs multilevel modelling to account for variations in school resources, including average student socioeconomic background, material and human resources. The results indicate that in better-resourced schools—particularly those with stronger material resources—students with an immigrant background, and newly arrived students in particular, tend to exhibit lower reading and mathematics competencies relative to their non-migrant peers, net of prior academic achievement. These findings suggest that resource-rich contexts do not necessarily equalise learning opportunities and may, in some cases, exacerbate existing disparities. Overall, the study advances research on migration and educational inequality by demonstrating how school contexts contribute to the persistence or widening of achievement gaps by migration background.