Private school quality in Italy

Private school enrolment may lead to worse subsequent performance in further education or in the labour market. If students differ in their ability not only to pay but to take advantage of educational opportunities (“talent” for short), private schools attract a worse pool of students when publicly funded schools are better suited to foster progress by more talented students. In the data we analyze, the impact of observable talent proxies on educational and labour market outcomes is indeed more positive for students who (endogenously) choose to attend public schools than for those who choose to pay for private education

Death rates from malaria epidemics, Burundi and Ethiopia.

Death rates exceeded emergency thresholds at 4 sites during epidemics of Plasmodium falciparum malaria in Burundi (2000-2001) and in Ethiopia (2003-2004). Deaths likely from malaria ranged from 1,000 to 8,900, depending on site, and accounted for 52% to 78% of total deaths. Earlier detection of malaria and better case management are needed

Improving Effective Surgical Delivery in Humanitarian Disasters: Lessons from Haiti

Kathryn Chu and colleagues describe the experiences of Médecins sans Frontières after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, and discuss how to improve delivery of surgery in humanitarian disasters

Incorporating scale dependence in disease burden estimates:the case of human African trypanosomiasis in Uganda

The WHO has established the disability-adjusted life year (DALY) as a metric for measuring the burden of human disease and injury globally. However, most DALY estimates have been calculated as national totals. We mapped spatial variation in the burden of human African trypanosomiasis (HAT) in Uganda for the years 2000-2009. This represents the first geographically delimited estimation of HAT disease burden at the sub-country scale.Disability-adjusted life-year (DALY) totals for HAT were estimated based on modelled age and mortality distributions, mapped using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software, and summarised by parish and district. While the national total burden of HAT is low relative to other conditions, high-impact districts in Uganda had DALY rates comparable to the national burden rates for major infectious diseases. The calculated average national DALY rate for 2000-2009 was 486.3 DALYs/100 000 persons/year, whereas three districts afflicted by rhodesiense HAT in southeastern Uganda had burden rates above 5000 DALYs/100 000 persons/year, comparable to national GBD 2004 average burden rates for malaria and HIV/AIDS.These results provide updated and improved estimates of HAT burden across Uganda, taking into account sensitivity to under-reporting. Our results highlight the critical importance of spatial scale in disease burden analyses. National aggregations of disease burden have resulted in an implied bias against highly focal diseases for which geographically targeted interventions may be feasible and cost-effective. This has significant implications for the use of DALY estimates to prioritize disease interventions and inform cost-benefit analyses

Models of unionism and unemployment

We investigate the problem of simultaneous determination of labour market institutions and outcomes in single equation multi-country estimations by presenting an empirical analysis of unemployment and union density in 20 OECD countries. When explicitly modelling potential endogeneity and heterogeneity, our results suggest that unions contribute to explaining unemployment in different ways than previously thought. In addition, the relationship between unemployment and union density is heterogeneous across countries, depending on the way in which income support for the unemployed is organize

The Effect of Multigrade Classes on Cognitive and non- Cognitive Skills. Causal Evidence Exploiting Minimum Class Size Rules in Italy

We analyse how schooling in multigrade classes affects the formation of student cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Our identification strategy is based on some institutional features of the Italian educational system establishing a minimum number of students per class. Classes that do not reach the minimum number of pupils are organized in multigrade classes. In addition, the Italian law also establishes a maximum number of students for multigrade classes, which implies that class size in multigrade classes is very similar to class size in small single grade classes with a number of students just above the minimum size. Using census data on 5th grade Italian students, we find that pupils in multigrade classrooms obtain worse test scores both in literacy and numeracy standardised tests compared to comparable pupils in single grade classroom. While the effect is small and not always statistically significant for the literacy score, we find a large and highly statistically significant effect on the numeracy score. We also find that pupils placed in multigrade classes tend to have a more external centred locus of control. Our results are robust to different specifications including controls for class size and a number of student and school characteristics

Tracking and Academic Prospects

This paper investigates the impact of secondary school tracking on students’ transitions to higher education (HE) in Italy. Using data from INVALSI and PISA surveys, we explore how track allocation – whether students attend academic, technical, or vocational schools – affects their academic outcomes and aspirations for higher education. There are significant disparities in transition rates between tracks, with students from vocational schools facing lower prospects of accessing higher education compared to their peers in academic tracks. These students not only demonstrate weaker skill growth over time but also lower aspirations for college, exacerbated by selective university admission policies based on standardized testing. The findings suggest that tracking reinforces social inequalities, with vocational students experiencing lower probabilities of entering tertiary education, especially under selective university admission policies. Revising vocational curricula, postponing track selection, or adjusting admission processes are policy measures that could improve equity in higher education access. Targeted interventions to support students in vocational tracks might also be needed to mitigate the long-term consequences of early academic tracking

Development and Deployment of the OpenMRS-Ebola Electronic Health Record System for an Ebola Treatment Center in Sierra Leone.

BACKGROUND: Stringent infection control requirements at Ebola treatment centers (ETCs), which are specialized facilities for isolating and treating Ebola patients, create substantial challenges for recording and reviewing patient information. During the 2014-2016 West African Ebola epidemic, paper-based data collection systems at ETCs compromised the quality, quantity, and confidentiality of patient data. Electronic health record (EHR) systems have the potential to address such problems, with benefits for patient care, surveillance, and research. However, no suitable software was available for deployment when large-scale ETCs opened as the epidemic escalated in 2014. OBJECTIVE: We present our work on rapidly developing and deploying OpenMRS-Ebola, an EHR system for the Kerry Town ETC in Sierra Leone. We describe our experience, lessons learned, and recommendations for future health emergencies. METHODS: We used the OpenMRS platform and Agile software development approaches to build OpenMRS-Ebola. Key features of our work included daily communications between the development team and ground-based operations team, iterative processes, and phased development and implementation. We made design decisions based on the restrictions of the ETC environment and regular user feedback. To evaluate the system, we conducted predeployment user questionnaires and compared the EHR records with duplicate paper records. RESULTS: We successfully built OpenMRS-Ebola, a modular stand-alone EHR system with a tablet-based application for infectious patient wards and a desktop-based application for noninfectious areas. OpenMRS-Ebola supports patient tracking (registration, bed allocation, and discharge); recording of vital signs and symptoms; medication and intravenous fluid ordering and monitoring; laboratory results; clinician notes; and data export. It displays relevant patient information to clinicians in infectious and noninfectious zones. We implemented phase 1 (patient tracking; drug ordering and monitoring) after 2.5 months of full-time development. OpenMRS-Ebola was used for 112 patient registrations, 569 prescription orders, and 971 medication administration recordings. We were unable to fully implement phases 2 and 3 as the ETC closed because of a decrease in new Ebola cases. The phase 1 evaluation suggested that OpenMRS-Ebola worked well in the context of the rollout, and the user feedback was positive. CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, OpenMRS-Ebola is the most comprehensive adaptable clinical EHR built for a low-resource setting health emergency. It is designed to address the main challenges of data collection in highly infectious environments that require robust infection prevention and control measures and it is interoperable with other electronic health systems. Although we built and deployed OpenMRS-Ebola more rapidly than typical software, our work highlights the challenges of having to develop an appropriate system during an emergency rather than being able to rapidly adapt an existing one. Lessons learned from this and previous emergencies should be used to ensure that a set of well-designed, easy-to-use, pretested health software is ready for quick deployment in future

Open Access Of Research: Which Role In The Processes Of Evaluation? Experience By The Agenzia Nazionale Di Valutazione Del Sistema Universitario E Della Ricerca (Anvur)

This article focuses on Open Access and Research Evaluation, and the experience by the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes (ANVUR). It is an updated version of the work presented at the Workshop "Open Science: new models of scientific communication and research evaluation", organized by Virginia Valzano at the University of Salento, on January 30, 2019

La scuola come investimento

In questo capitolo si presenta evidenza recente sui rendimenti dell\u2019istruzione in Italia, utilizzando come base dati l\u2019Indagine sui Bilanci delle Famiglie Italiane, condotta bi-annualmente su un campione rappresentativo della popolazione italiana, liberamente accessibile con finalit\ue0 di ricerca.1 Il vantaggio di questa base di dati \ue8 la raccolta di informazioni dettagliate sulle diverse fonti di reddito percepito dagli individui nell\u2019arco della vita, che permettono quindi di valutare con maggior precisione le eventuali differenze reddituali eventualmente correlate al possesso di diversi titoli di studio