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This study aims to investigate the organisational structure to exploit data analytics in the educational sector. The paper proposes three different organisational configurations, which describe the connections among educational actors in a national system. The ultimate goal is to provide insights about alternative organisational settings for the adoption of data analytics in education.

The paper is based on a participant observation approach applied in the Italian educational system. The study is based on four research projects that involved teachers, school principals and governmental organisations over the period 2017–2020.

As a result, the centralised, the decentralised and the network-based configurations are presented and discussed according to three organisational dimensions of analysis (organisational layers, roles and data management). The network-based configuration suggests the presence of a network educational data scientist that may represent a concrete solution to foster more efficient and effective use of educational data analytics.

The value of this study relies on its systemic approach to educational data analytics from an organisational perspective, which unfolds the roles of schools and central administration. The analysis of the alternative organisational configuration allows moving a step forward towards a structured, effective and efficient system for the use of data in the educational sector.

This research investigates the impact of managerial practices implemented by Italian school principals on students' outcomes, using micro-data provided by the National Evaluation Committee for Education (INVALSI) for 2013/14 school year.

Employing an educational production function, the authors regress a set of student and school's characteristics, enriched by information from a questionnaire filled by school principals to estimate student's score at grade 8 (last year of junior secondary school), also taking into account student's prior achievement (at grade 6 – first year of junior secondary school).

Indicators about managerial practices have positive coefficients, but low statistical significance. Stronger associations between management variables and test scores are detected for low-SES schools.

The research presented here is particularly innovative in the Italian context, where little evidence exists about the impact of managerial skills in education, though institutional reforms are leading towards a strengthening of school principal's leadership role. In this paper, the authors move a first step by describing managerial practices and their diffusion in different schools and geographical areas within the country. The authors focus the attention on the role of managerial practices (what principals do) and not on the managerial skills (what principals are able to do).