Promotion with and Without Learning: Effects on Student Enrollment and Dropout Behavior

Elizabeth King, Peter Orazem and Elizabeth M. Paterno

Staff General Research Papers Archive from Iowa State University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Many educators and policymakers have argued for lenient grade promotion policy – even automatic promotion – in developing country settings where grade retention rates are high. The argument assumes that grade retention discourages persistence or continuation in school and that the promotion of children with lower achievement does not hamper their ability or their peer’s ability to perform at the next level. Alternatively, promoting students into grades for which they are not prepared may lead to early dropout behavior. This study shows that in a sample of schools from the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan, students are promoted primarily on the basis of merit. An econometric decomposition of promotion decisions into a component that is based on merit indicators (attendance and achievement in mathematics and language) and another that is uncorrelated with those indicators allow a test of whether parental decisions to keep their child in school is influenced by merit-based or non-merit-based promotions. Results suggest that the enrollment decision is significantly influenced by whether learning has taken place, and that grade promotion that is uncorrelated with merit has a negligible impact on school continuation.

Keywords: Grade repetition; grade retention; grade promotion; enrollment; achievement; dropout; Pakistan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-07-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cwa, nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/papers/p3888-2008-07-28.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Promotion with and without Learning: Effects on Student Enrollment and Dropout Behavior (2016)
Working Paper: Promotion with and without Learning: Effects on Student Enrollment and Dropout Behavior (2015)
Working Paper: Promotion with and without learning: effects on student enrollment and dropout behavior (2008)
Working Paper: Promotion with and without learning: effects on student enrollment and dropout behavior (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:isu:genres:12968

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Staff General Research Papers Archive from Iowa State University, Department of Economics Iowa State University, Dept. of Economics, 260 Heady Hall, Ames, IA 50011-1070. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Curtis Balmer ().