INVALSI (Istituto Nazionale per la Valutazione del Sistema Educativo)
Italy's national public institute for standardised evaluation of the education and training system
INVALSI Official Institutional WebsiteINVALSI (Istituto Nazionale per la Valutazione del Sistema Educativo di Istruzione e di Formazione) is Italy's national public research institute responsible for the evaluation of the national education and training system. It holds full legal personality under public law and operates with statutory, administrative, accounting, and financial autonomy, headquartered in Rome.
Its core function is to design and administer the Prove Nazionali INVALSI — periodic, standardised assessments of student learning in Italian, Mathematics, and English — at key grade levels (grades 2, 5, and 8), aligned with National Curriculum Guidelines and European language frameworks. INVALSI is one of three pillars of Italy's Sistema Nazionale di Valutazione (SNV), alongside INDIRE and the national inspectorate corps.
Beyond national testing, INVALSI manages Italy's participation in major international education surveys including the IEA's TIMSS, PIRLS, and ICCS programmes, as well as the OECD's PISA and TALIS, and is an institutional member of the IEA. Findings from these international studies feed directly into the refinement of the national assessment framework.
As a data-driven institution at the centre of Italian education policy, INVALSI is directly relevant to innovations in learning assessment, educational measurement, data analytics for school evaluation, and evidence-based policymaking in the education sector.