Learning Loss Due to School Change: A Cause for Major Concern?

Abstract

We investigate the effect of changing schools on academic achievement. Using representative data on the educational trajectories of 17,000 Swiss lower secondary students and national assessment data at the end of compulsory schooling, we estimate the potential individual achievement gaps caused by a school change. While the overall effect is surprisingly small and statistically insignificant, we find a significant, but also small, negative effect for boys. These effects quickly diminish one year after the change.

Disclosure statement

The authors report that there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 The analysis by Hanushek et al. (2004), which relates to the strand of research that examines the effect of changing schools on nonmobile peers, also addresses the question of exogeneity by controlling for school quality.

2 The common curriculum for the French-speaking part of Switzerland was introduced in 2011. In the German-speaking cantons, the common curriculum was implemented between 2018 and 2020, depending on the canton.

3 The ÜGK index of socioeconomic status is a composite score based on the highest occupational status of the parents, the highest educational level of the parents, and the number of books in the household. The imputation technique in the ÜGK dataset follows the approach used in the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). This method uses regression analysis on the available variables. The SES variable is marked as missing if more than one of its components is missing; for more details, see Pham et al. (2019).

4 This difference is plausible for at least two reasons: Firstly, people with a higher socioeconomic status are more likely to work in occupations where changes of employer are also more likely to involve a major geographical move, such as moving to another canton. Secondly, such changes are associated with greater costs, which in turn are more likely to be affordable for people with a higher socioeconomic status. However, looking only at the students who have changed the cantons, our data show that people with higher socioeconomic status do not undertake greater distance than those with lower socioeconomic status.