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Long-Term Effects of Grade Retention

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  • Simon ter Meulen

Abstract

Grade retention offers students a chance to catch up with unmastered material but also leads to less labor-market experience by delaying graduation and labor-market entry. This is the first paper to quantify this trade-off, using an exit exam cutoff of Dutch academic secondary schools, where failing implies grade retention. I find no impact of retaining on final educational attainment, although retained students are later to graduate. Grade retention does lead to annual earnings loss at age 28 of 3000 euro (8.5%) due to reduced labor-market experience. Overall, grade retention is of no benefit for students around the cutoff.

Suggested Citation

  • Simon ter Meulen, 2023. "Long-Term Effects of Grade Retention," CESifo Working Paper Series 10212, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10212
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    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10212.pdf
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Hanemaaijer, Kyra & Marie, Olivier & Musumeci, Marco, 2023. "The Fast and the Studious? Ramadan Observance and Student Performance," IZA Discussion Papers 16249, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    grade retention; secondary education; higher education degrees; earnings loss;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I23 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Higher Education; Research Institutions
    • I26 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Returns to Education

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