Grade retention and educational attainment.Exploiting the 2001 Reform by the French-Speaking Community of Belgium and Synthetic Control Methods

This paper evaluates the effects of grade retention on attainment by exploiting a reform introduced in 2001 in the French-Speaking Community of Belgium whereby the possibility of grade retention in grade 7 was reintroduced. It uses the Synthetic Control Method to identify the best possible pre-treatment control. Data come from three waves of the PISA study (corresponding to periods before and after the reform) that contains test scores of representative samples of 15 year-olds. These are used essentially to answer two questions. First, has the 2001 grade repetition reform at least succeeded at... Mehr ...