Reducing school failure is one of the biggest challenges facing the education systems of Spain and Italy. This article investigates the existence of possible elements common to both countries that would make it possible to speak of a “Mediterranean model” of school failure. To this end, a multilevel logistical model is applied to the microdata corresponding to the reading competence provided by PISA- 2009. Personal variables and socio-economic and cultural characteristics of the household seem to have a similar impact in both countries. With regard to the centre variables, Italy and Spain share the strong impact of parents’ socio-economic status and the low incidence of material resources. There is, however, a strong disparity between countries as regards the socio-cultural profile of pupils enrolled in schools according to their ownership. Once that disparity has been checked, the impact of the centre’s ownership appears to be irrelevant. Finally, there are disparities in the effects of variables related to the management of the centre-Reducing school failure is among the main challenges of the Spanish and Italian educational systems. In this paper we aim at identifying elements common to both countries which low us to talk about a “Mediterranean model” of school failure. We feed a multilevel logistic model with microdata from the readmission competence of PISA-2009. Personal variables and the socio-economic and cultural characteristics of the household have a similar impact in both countries. With regard to school level variables, Italy and Spain share a strong effect of the socio-economic characteristics of the parents and a weak impact of material resources. There are, however, important differences in the socio-cultural profile of students attending schools, depending on their ownership. Eleven we control for these differences, the impact of school ownership sessions to be irrelevant. Finally, some doses are observed in regards to the effects of variables related to the school management