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

Glick, Peter; Sahn, David E.

dc.creator	Glick, Peter
dc.creator	Sahn, David E.
dc.date	2012-03-30T07:12:38Z
dc.date	2012-03-30T07:12:38Z
dc.date	2010-02-15
dc.date.accessioned	2023-02-18T19:41:49Z
dc.date.available	2023-02-18T19:41:49Z
dc.identifier	World Bank Economic Review
dc.identifier	1564-698X
dc.identifier	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/4516
dc.identifier.uri	http://localhost:8080/xmlui/handle/CUHPOERS/250001
dc.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.
dc.publisher	World Bank
dc.rights	CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO
dc.rights	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo
dc.rights	World Bank
dc.subject	academic outcomes
dc.subject	academic performance
dc.subject	cognitive skills
dc.subject	cohort of students
dc.subject	early dropout
dc.subject	education
dc.subject	education outcomes
dc.subject	education systems
dc.subject	grade repetition
dc.subject	knowledge
dc.subject	middle school
dc.subject	primary school
dc.subject	school
dc.subject	school age
dc.subject	school policies
dc.subject	schooling
dc.subject	schools
dc.subject	secondary school
dc.subject	teacher
dc.subject	values
dc.title	Early Academic Performance, Grade Repetition, and School Attainment in Senegal
dc.type	Journal Article
dc.type	Journal Article
dc.coverage	Senegal