Early Academic Performance, Grade Repetition, and School Attainment in Senegal

Little is known in developing country environments about how a child's cognitive skills manifested in the first years of schooling are related to later educational success, because the panel data needed to analyze this question have been lacking. This study takes advantage of a unique data set...

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Main Authors:	Glick, Peter, Sahn, David E.
Format:	Journal Article
Published:	World Bank 2012
Subjects:	academic outcomes academic performance cognitive skills cohort of students early dropout education education outcomes education systems grade repetition knowledge middle school primary school school school age school policies schooling schools secondary school teacher values
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4516

id	okr-10986-4516
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-45162021-04-23T14:02:18Z Early Academic Performance, Grade Repetition, and School Attainment in Senegal Glick, Peter Sahn, David E. academic outcomes academic performance cognitive skills cohort of students early dropout education education outcomes education systems grade repetition knowledge middle school primary school school school age school policies schooling schools secondary school teacher values Little is known in developing country environments about how a child's cognitive skills manifested in the first years of schooling are related to later educational success, because the panel data needed to analyze this question have been lacking. This study takes advantage of a unique data set from Senegal that combines test score data for children from the second grade with information on their subsequent school progression from a follow-up survey conducted seven years later. Measures of skills from early primary school, corrected for measurement error using multiple test observations per child, are strongly positively associated with later school progression. A plausible interpretation is that parents invest more in a child's education when the returns to doing so are higher. The results point to the need for remedial policies to target lagging students early on to reduce early dropout. Grade repetition policies target poorly performing students and are pervasive in Francophone Africa. Using variation across schools in test score thresholds for promotion to identify the effects of second-grade repetition, the analysis shows that repeating students are more likely to leave school before completing primary school than students with similar ability who are not held back, pointing to the need for alternative measures to improve the skills of lagging children. 2012-03-30T07:12:38Z 2012-03-30T07:12:38Z 2010-02-15 Journal Article World Bank Economic Review 1564-698X http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4516 CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank Journal Article Senegal
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
topic	academic outcomes academic performance cognitive skills cohort of students early dropout education education outcomes education systems grade repetition knowledge middle school primary school school school age school policies schooling schools secondary school teacher values
spellingShingle	academic outcomes academic performance cognitive skills cohort of students early dropout education education outcomes education systems grade repetition knowledge middle school primary school school school age school policies schooling schools secondary school teacher values Glick, Peter Sahn, David E. Early Academic Performance, Grade Repetition, and School Attainment in Senegal
geographic_facet	Senegal
description	Little is known in developing country environments about how a child's cognitive skills manifested in the first years of schooling are related to later educational success, because the panel data needed to analyze this question have been lacking. This study takes advantage of a unique data set from Senegal that combines test score data for children from the second grade with information on their subsequent school progression from a follow-up survey conducted seven years later. Measures of skills from early primary school, corrected for measurement error using multiple test observations per child, are strongly positively associated with later school progression. A plausible interpretation is that parents invest more in a child's education when the returns to doing so are higher. The results point to the need for remedial policies to target lagging students early on to reduce early dropout. Grade repetition policies target poorly performing students and are pervasive in Francophone Africa. Using variation across schools in test score thresholds for promotion to identify the effects of second-grade repetition, the analysis shows that repeating students are more likely to leave school before completing primary school than students with similar ability who are not held back, pointing to the need for alternative measures to improve the skills of lagging children.
format	Journal Article
author	Glick, Peter Sahn, David E.
author_facet	Glick, Peter Sahn, David E.
author_sort	Glick, Peter
title	Early Academic Performance, Grade Repetition, and School Attainment in Senegal
title_short	Early Academic Performance, Grade Repetition, and School Attainment in Senegal
title_full	Early Academic Performance, Grade Repetition, and School Attainment in Senegal
title_fullStr	Early Academic Performance, Grade Repetition, and School Attainment in Senegal
title_full_unstemmed	Early Academic Performance, Grade Repetition, and School Attainment in Senegal
title_sort	early academic performance, grade repetition, and school attainment in senegal
publisher	World Bank
publishDate	2012
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4516
_version_	1764391705705971712

Early Academic Performance, Grade Repetition, and School Attainment in Senegal

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