##ities. in the case of education, these principles need to be applied taking account of the sector ’ s specific features and complexity. an effective education policy must reconcile excellence with a fair distribution of the opportunities to go on learning up to the desired level. these two objectives are not in conflict, provided the public sphere seeks to create equal opportunities and chooses operational options that allow the market to play a part in selecting excellence. scholastic success depends significantly on the conditions of pupils ’ families. from this point of view italy appears to be socially almost immobile. the probability of earning a degree depends on the quality of the preceding education, but if this is sometimes inadequate, as in italy today, the family ’ s socio - economic background plays a major role. too little has changed in this respect since don milani raised the same question forty years ago, albeit in another context, in the light of his experience with the children of the school at barbiana. giving all young people the same opportunity to succeed in learning, provided they apply themselves, is the key to increasing efficiency and fairness in the field of education. both these objectives can be pursued in a variety of complementary ways. in primary and secondary education it may be worth increasing the competition between schools, both public and private, through methods of financing that both reward the best schools and transfer resources directly to families in order to give them more choice. the information that guides families in their choice of schools appears insufficient. in addition to the prospect of obtaining a diploma that has the same value for everybody, they should be offered uniform assessment criteria that permit informed choices. it is necessary to eliminate the perverse incentive for families and schools to collude in lowering teaching standards, especially if financing continues to depend exclusively on the number of students enrolled. the first steps towards developing a comprehensive assessment system that have already been incorporated in italian legislation deserve to be followed by others, not least so as to permit better informed guidance of public action to govern and reform the school system. somewhat similar considerations apply to universities, essential institutions for an economy that wishes to retain its place among the advanced countries. in recent years important changes have been made to the italian university system. for the first time an assessment has been made of the quality of research. notwithstanding all the measurement problems involved, this could shortly be used to guide the public financing of individual universities. it is important that the work done should not turn into a missed opportunity. transparency and public access to the assessment process help to improve the

in the south, the figure rises to 3. 2 points, reflecting a greater relative scarcity of skilled workers. all this highlights the important contribution towards overcoming the country ’ s geographical dualism that could be made by policies to raise educational levels in the south. a high level of education is also the best way to minimize the risks of fragmented career paths and of job loss, which have become more pressing than in the past with the spread of fixed - term employment contracts. the higher the professional qualification, the greater the incentive for firms to invest in stable and lasting employment and the greater the likelihood of workers finding another job quickly if the present one is unsatisfactory or threatened by adverse events. higher levels of education bring gains in productivity. the relationship can be gauged roughly from the link between educational qualification and earnings, that is from the personal return on education. in the majority of oecd countries, people with a qualification equivalent to our specialist university degree earn at least 50 per cent more than workers with a secondary school diploma. the wage differentials between workers with a diploma and workers with only a lower secondary school certificate range from 15 to 30 per cent. in italy individuals ’ return on education is lower than the oecd average ; nonetheless, the return on a given investment in education, even taking the associated costs fully into account, is much higher than for alternative investments. a poor level of education can affect the evolution of productivity through the inability to exploit the opportunities offered by rapid technical progress. it is only recently, and later in italy than elsewhere, that the organization of production has begun to benefit from extensive use of information technology, for which better training is essential. among the highly developed countries, italy stands out for its anomalous and static model of specialization, in which the predominant industries are marked by a medium to low level of human - capital. it is a model that is consistent with a relatively small endowment of highly skilled manpower. in the new technological and competitive environment it drags our economy down, preventing it from penetrating today ’ s more dynamic innovative branches and exposing it to the fiercer competition from emerging countries. another crucial condition for overcoming this static model is the presence of managerial skills capable of reshaping production processes, exploiting technologies, and reallocating resources. the widespread availability of these skills can be achieved through higher levels of education ; inevitably this will be accompanied by greater contestability of firms ’ ownership. 3. what kind of education? in the course of