Evaluating the ‘threat’ effects of grade repetition: exploiting the 2001 reform by the French-Speaking Community of Belgium

Abstract

Like active labour market programmes, grade repetition could generate two types of effects: better/worse outcomes due to programme participation (i.e. the fact that pupils repeat a particular grade). This is what the existing literature on grade repetition has focused on. Another potential outcome is the ‘threat’ effect of grade repetition. Pupils and/or their family could make significant efforts to avoid grade repetition and its important opportunity cost. Learning effort by pupils could be a function of the risk of grade repetition. This paper attempts to assess that relationship by exploiting a reform introduced in 2001 in the French-Speaking Community of Belgium, synonymous with a reinforced overall threat of grade repetition. The possibility to impose grade repetition sanctions and the end of grades 8–12 has always existed, but in year 2001, policy makers reinstated the possibility to repeat grade 7, putting an end to the regime of ‘social promotion’ applicable to that grade since 1995. We use data from two waves of the Programme for International Student Assessment study (corresponding to periods before and after the reform) to evaluate the medium-term effects of this reform. The first measure of performance we consider is the position in the curriculum (or grade) reached at the age of 15, and we show that it deteriorated after 2001. We also consider the reform's impact on test scores. Focusing on grade 10, we fail to verify the necessary condition for grade repetition threat to lead to higher test scores. The tentative conclusion is that an enhanced threat of grade retention after 2001 did not lead to better medium-term outcomes, even among the segments of the population the most at risk of grade repetition.

JEL classification::

• I20
• I28
• H52

Keywords:

• grade retention
• educational attainment
• threat effects

Notes

As opposed to what he calls the ‘sanction’ effect (i.e. higher achievement that could be ascribed to grade repetition and the additional time granted to students to master the lower grade curriculum, before moving on).

Students who do not meet the standards are required to attend a 6-week summer school programme, after which they retake the exams. Those who pass move on to the next grade; those who fail this second exam are required to repeat the grade (Jacob 2005).

Belgium is a federal state where the educational policy is split according to linguistic lines. Each linguistic community is in charge of its educational system. Only minor aspects of the educational policy (like the age of compulsory education, i.e. 18) remain under federal jurisdiction.

Décret relatif à l'organisation du premier degré de l'enseignement secondaire D. 19 July 2001. M.B. 23 August 2001.

Formally, the legislator insists on the fact that the reform's aim was not exactly to force the pupils to ‘repeat’ the year, but to channel weaker students (who do not achieve satisfactory results at the end of grade 7 or at the end of grade 8) towards a ‘complementary’ year. In practice, however, it amounts to imposing that these students take more time before moving to the upper grade.

Remember that we look at age 15 scores to identify the effect of a decision that affected pupils when they were aged 12–13.

We have chosen not to use the 2000 wave because the sample size for the French Community of Belgium was about half the size in comparison to 2003 and 2006. This may raise issues of comparability across cohorts.

Following what is usually done in the empirical labour literature on the threat benefits of ALMPs.

We essentially tried alternatives using the Flemish Community of Belgium and the immediate EU neighbours of Belgium (France, Germany and the Netherlands). But, the choice of countries forming the control group did not fundamentally affect our results.

We aggregate these different countries, weighing each of them by the inverse of its PISA sample size. More details on this are given in the next section.

Scores reported in Table 1 and in the subsequent econometric analysis correspond to individual averages, aggregating scores obtained in the three topics covered by PISA: Math, Sciences and Reading literacy.

PISA test scores are based on standardised questionnaires that teams of experts have assessed as to their capacity to gauge pupils' skills and competences and make them comparable across waves and across participating countries. By contrast, in the French-Speaking Belgium, the retention decision is based on the teachers' assessment of the pupil's ability of passing to a higher grade. There is no standardised test used across schools, nor is there a clearly defined threshold to determine whether a pupil should be retained or not.

Which corresponds to the highest occupational index score of the student's father or mother (Ganzeboom, de Graff, and Treiman 1992).

Q20 means that the student has an individual HISEI score comprised between the lowest value and the 20th quantile of the overall HISEI distribution. Q40 means that he/she is between the 20th and 40th quantiles.

Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Iceland, Norway, Poland and Sweden, all European countries where grade retention does not exist.

Highest occupational index score of the student's father or mother.