IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/wbecrv/v39y2025i4p993-1017..html

The Effect of Shortening High-School Duration by One Year on Student Outcomes: Evidence from Ghana

Author

Listed:
  • Augustine Denteh
  • Samuel Asare
  • Bernardin Senadza

Abstract

In 2010, the government of Ghana shortened the duration of senior high school by one year. As a result of this policy, the 2009 and 2010 high-school entry cohorts experienced exogenously different years of education but took the same exit exam in 2013. Using nationwide administrative data on the two cohorts, we find that the one-year reduction in schooling substantially worsened performance in all subjects. The most economically significant declines occurred in two core subjects with the lowest historical pass rates—core mathematics and integrated science. Analysis by gender shows larger detrimental effects for female students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics subjects. We also find suggestive evidence that the policy negatively impacted students in the long term.

Suggested Citation

  • Augustine Denteh & Samuel Asare & Bernardin Senadza, 2025. "The Effect of Shortening High-School Duration by One Year on Student Outcomes: Evidence from Ghana," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 39(4), pages 993-1017.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:39:y:2025:i:4:p:993-1017.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/wber/lhae046
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:wbecrv:v:39:y:2025:i:4:p:993-1017.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/wrldbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.