A Repetência no Contexto Internacional: O que Dizem os Dados de Avaliações das Quais o Brasil não Participa?

Brazil is characterized by very high levels of grade repetition. Only Angola suffers from student flow worse than Brazil. There is ample qualitative and quantitative evidence establishing a link between grade repetition and dropping out from school. However, there is little discussion in Brazil of the impact of grade repetition in the international context. The objective of this text is to use data from TIMSS mathematics an science evaluations and PIRLS reading evaluations to estimate the impact of anti-repetition policies upon academic achievement. In order to do this I used both univariate comparisons of countries that have outlawed repetition in primary school with other countries and multivariate regression analysis. The main result is that there is no evidence whatsoever that anti-repetition policies have any negative impact upon children?s academic achievement. On the contrary, regression results show a positive, albeit non-significant, impact of automatic promotion upon test results.