The ESI measures countries’ “distance to the ideal” performance. This ideal performance is chosen as the highest achieved by any country over a period of 7 years. The ideal performance is scaled to be 100 and the scores of all countries are then computed and compared to that. Basis of the ESI are 15 individual indicators from various international datasets. The scores are calculated across countries at the indicators’ level. The scores are then averaged at the various layers and finally the Index score is formed. To illustrate, an Index (or pillar, sub-pillar etc.) score of 65 suggests that the country has reached 65% of the ideal performance. Thus, there is still 35% (100-65) room for improvement. A score of 100 corresponds to achieving the ‘frontier’, that is an aspirational target performance for that indicator. A score of 0 corresponds to a lowest-case performance. This page shows specific information on the scores achieved by the chosen country across pillars, sub-pillars and indicators. Below, you can find a short commentary on country’s skills system performance over time and the ESI 2020 scores.

Italy

2022 scores and progress over time

Italy ranks last in the 2022 release remaining at the same position as in 2020 and belongs to the “low-achieving” group. It ranks 24th in skills development, 27th in skills matching and is the bottom scorer in skills activation.

Italy ranks 24th in skills development. It has a good share of “VET students”, ranking 12th in this indicator, but a very low “upper secondary education (and above)”, where it ranks 29th. The other indicators in this pillar are between the 13th and the 28th position.

Italy performs last in skills activation in 2022, reaching the bottom of the ranking among the 31 countries. It performs among the three worst in all the indicators.

Italy ranks 27th in skills matching. It has a very low performance in all indicators, where it ranks between 20th and 29th position.