SHAPING STUDENTS ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE: TWO ESSAYS ON THE ROLE OF SCHOOL-LEVEL INTERVENTIONS

The thesis consists of two papers in the field of education economics, which make use of counterfactual econometric techniques to evaluate the impact of specific school-level interventions on students' academic performance in the Italian context. Education is universally acknowledged as a key determinant of human development, yielding substantial returns across economic, health, and social domains. However, substantial disparities in educational achievement and attainment persist, largely shaped by individual attributes and family background characteristics. Therefore, it is of particular interest to investigate if and how specific school-level interventions may foster improvements in students’ academic performance, while also contributing to shape existing inequalities in educational achievement. The first paper examines the effects of the introduction of school canteens in Italian primary schools on students’ standardized test scores in Italian, mathematics and English. The results indicate that, while no effect is observed in grade 2, a positive and statistically significant effect is found in grade 5 for Italian and English listening. Findings also suggest that the mechanism of increased school time, which theoretically could be favored by the presence of the canteen, is not the one driving the effect of school canteens introduction on academic performance in grade 5. Rather, it is plausible that other mechanisms are at play, on which an hypothesis is made concerning the beneficial effect of socializing with peers during lunchtime. Results also indicate that the introduction of a school canteen contributes to narrowing some existing performance gaps among students, namely those related to gender and socio-economic and cultural status. These findings reveal that the introduction of school canteens in primary schools exerts a positive effect on students’ academic performance, also contributing to reducing some of the existing inequalities, thereby constituting a valuable investment. The second paper reports the results of the evaluation of a two-year intervention --- implemented in lower secondary schools in Italy and aimed at fostering students’ digital skills through the creation of digital communication products --- on students’ standardized test scores in English, mathematics and Italian. Results indicate that the assignment to the project had a positive and statistically significant impact on digital skills. By contrast, a negative and statistically significant effect is found on academic performance in all subjects, only for students with a higher taste for digital activities. We interpret these findings as the potential result of a “crowding-out” effect on time allocation: the intervention may have increased the time devoted to digital activities outside school for more digitally-oriented individuals, which came at the expense of study time and ultimately reduced academic performance. These findings reveal potential trade-offs between improving digital skills and deteriorating student performance in core subjects, pointing to the necessity of understanding which types of activities at the core of digital skills acquisition initiatives may have the greatest potential to improve digital skills with minimal or no damage to academic performance.