Is repeating the year beneficial for students?
Is there any benefit in keeping back students with poor academic performance? For students who have been kept back, how do their academic results compare to the academic results they would have had if they hadn't been? Find the answer to these questions in this study by Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos.
According to OECD data for 2012, 12% of 15-year-old pupils in OECD countries indicated that they had repeated at least one year during compulsory schooling, and 7% of pupils had repeated a year at least once in the first two cycles (primary). The incidence of retention is quite heterogeneous between countries, ranging from no retention in some countries, such as Japan and Norway, to a number of countries, including Portugal, where between 30% and 39% of pupils repeat a year at least once before the age of 15.
The impact of retention/transition decisions on students' academic, professional and social paths is a controversial issue. Proponents of policies that encourage the retention of low-performing students believe that repeating a year offers these students an opportunity to mature and master subjects and content that have not been properly learned, before having to confront more complex subjects. What's more, they argue that retention can promote greater homogeneity between these students and their peers, sparing them greater daily frustration.
Critics of retention, or advocates of «social transition», on the other hand, fear that retained students may be harmed by stigmatisation, reduced expectations of their academic performance by teachers and parents, self-perception of low competence and low potential, and the challenges of adapting to a new peer group. Taken together, they believe that these factors can eliminate any benefits that may derive from repeating the year, increasing the student's anxiety and detachment from school, promoting bad behaviour and early dropout.
This study by Fundação Francisco Manuel dos Santos seeks to assess what impact the decision to force a student to repeat a year has on their subsequent academic performance, looking at questions such as:
- the decisive factors in retention of underperforming students;
- the impact of retention on marks in subsequent exams;
- the impact of retention on the number of future retentions of students
To this end, the study looks at the effects of the decision to retain/transition Year 4 pupils on their school trajectory and analyses its effects up to three years after that decision. We look at the subsequent progression of the students in terms of the marks obtained in the Year 6 national exams and the number of future retentions. In this way, FFMS seeks to provide the interested public and political decision-makers with more in-depth information about an issue that is so important for education in Portugal.
