A vertical analysis of difficulties in mathematics by secondary school to university level; some evidence stems from standardized assessment

A longitudinal analysis of the recurring mistakes at different school levels in national standardized assessment tests is presented. The analysis of the outcomes highlights some difficulties common across different school grades. Subsequently, we extend our research to university students: we investigate the results of tasks solved by students at the end of high school and at the beginning of university in an e-learning environment called AlmaMathematica. We examine whether there are commonalities between errors that lead to wrong answers at school level and university level. Results show that university students share the same difficulties of high school students when faced with similar tasks.