Por:
Isabel de Brigard
|
Fecha:
2021
Abstract:
In an effort to improve coverage of the school system at the primary and secondary education levels, schools in various countries have introduced partial school days. This policy is supposed to allow two or more shifts of students to use the same infrastructure and be instructed by the same teachers, but reduces the amount of time children spend in school. Despite some positive effects on coverage, two-shift schooling has negative impacts on various learning outcomes, such as students’ performance on standardized tests. Using longitudinal data from Pruebas Saber in Colombia, this paper explores the
impact of a full day of school on performance in the mathematics and language scores. Initial OLS regression results are contrasted with fixed effects models. Some effect heterogeneity is explored as well. Positive and statistically significant effects are found across all models. However, there are considerable variations in the size of the effect. First, effects on the mathematics scores are consistently larger than effects on language.
Second, full-day schooling is found to make more of a difference in contexts where resources outside the classroom are less available, such as public schools which tend to be underfunded, rural areas that tend to be underserved by public services, and in children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Differences in school quality have surprising interaction effects with the length of the school day. Additional instruction time is shown to make the most difference at both ends of the quality spectrum.
