The effects of an upper secondary education reform on the attainment of immigrant youth

Abstract

The national Norwegian school reform of 1994, which gave students statutory rights to at least 3 years of upper secondary education, had a significant impact on educational attainment among immigrant youth. In particular, we find that the immigrant transition rate from compulsory schooling to completion of the first year of upper secondary education improved significantly from the pre- to the post-reform period. We present evidence suggesting that this improvement can be attributed to a reduction in school capacity constraints rather than to cohort heterogeneity. An important implication is that nontargeted educational reforms can have large effects on the educational attainment of disadvantaged groups in general and ethnic minority youth in particular.

Keywords:

• immigrant youth
• education reform

JEL Classification:

• I21

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge funding from the Norwegian Research Council. The paper is part of the activities of the Centre of Equality, Social Organization, and Performance (ESOP), University of Oslo.