Effects of residential mobility on the educational opportunity of children in a society with a centralised educational system

Research in the United States indicates that moving adversely affects children’s school performance No studies have been conducted on this subject in continental Europe yet. Unlike in the United States, most continental European societies have a national school system, which should diminish the educational consequences of moving. The question of this article is therefor “Does changing schools adversely affect the subsequent performance of good students in the Netherlands?” Our data are from the VOCL ’89 cohort, a nationally representative longitudinal cohort of high school students. The results indicate that students in VWO (pre-university) programs are more likely to repeat the year than their counterparts who do not change schools. The discrepancy is greater still in the MAVO (lower general secondary education) programs. MAVO students are more likely to transfer to less competitive programs than their counterparts who do not change schools. They also repeat the year more often. Thus, we found for a continental European society also that changing schools for non-academic reasons adversely affects subsequent school performance.