Wake-up call in Year 8 leads to higher grades and more education

Until the 2024/2025 school year, pupils in Year 8 were assessed halfway through the school year as ready or not ready to start upper secondary education. In 2023, the Danish Parliament unanimously decided to abolish this educational readiness assessment. However, a new research study shows that for students in Year 8 with a grade point average just below 4 and who were therefore declared academically not ready for upper secondary education, the educational readiness assessment served as a wake-up call, prompting them to work harder in order to be declared ready at the reevaluation the following year. This resulted in them improving their exam results at the end of primary and lower secondary school, being more likely to complete upper secondary education and enrolling in higher education within five years of the educational readiness assessment. Importantly, this did not adversely impact student well-being.

It is new that our study shows that a negative assessment of a student’s readiness to continue in the education system is not necessarily harmful to students

^{Søren Albeck Nielsen, Assistant Professor, TrygFonden’s Centre for Child Research, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University}

Wake-up call

This is shown by a new research study published in the renowned Journal of Public Economics. The study was conducted by Søren Albeck Nielsen, an assistant professor at TrygFonden’s Centre for Child Research and the Department of Economics at Aarhus University, and Thorbjør Sejr Guul, an associate professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Southern Denmark and an associate at TrygFonden’s Centre for Child Research. Søren Albeck Nielsen says:  

“International research has shown that directly linking negative academic assessments to consequences such as having to repeat a year or being denied access to further education can be harmful to students. What’s new is that our study shows that a negative assessment of a student’s readiness to continue in the education system is not necessarily harmful to students if delivered early and if combined genuine second-chance opportunities. This indicates that timing and design are crucial when it comes to formulating admission requirements and assessments prior to enrolment in a programme: If the signal about whether the student’s academic level is sufficient is given early and clearly, and the consequences are not set in stone, a negative assessment can serve as a productive wake-up call for students.

In Year 9, they improved their final grades more than those of their peers who had been declared ready for further education

^{Thorbjørn Sejr Guul, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science and Public Management, University of Southern Denmark, Associate at TrygFonden's Centre for Child Research}

Increased efforts paid off  

The study draws on the introduction in Denmark of the educational readiness assessment in 2015, under which students had to attain a certain grade point average in Year 8 in order to be declared academically ready for further education.  Students with grade point averages just above and below the threshold are very similar, but are evaluated very differently in terms of their academic abilities. Therefore, researchers can use the regression discontinuity design method to investigate the effect of being assessed as being not ready for further education. By looking at educational readiness assessments in conjunction with register data and well-being surveys, they can also track students’ educational progress over several years and analyse the mechanisms behind it.  

The analyses show that the negative readiness assessment in Year 8 prompted students to increase their efforts at school. According to the researchers, this is evident from the fact that, in well-being surveys conducted in Years 8 and 9, they responded to a greater extent than their education-ready peers that they are focused and concentrated in class. At the same time, they cut back on their part-time jobs in Year 9, which were taking time away from their homework. And that paid off over time, says Thorbjørn Sejr Guul:  

“The increased effort was not reflected in the results of the national reading tests in Year 8, which the students did so soon after the readiness assessment that the behavioural change had hardly had time to take effect. However, in Year 9, they improved their final grades more than those of their peers who had been declared ready for further education. The positive effects were strongest for girls and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, but all groups of students benefitted from the changes in attitude and behaviour triggered by the negative educational readiness assessments.  

On the other hand, teachers were not found to be more supportive of students who were deemed to be not ready for further education than their peers who were ready for further education. Nor is the positive development explained by schools and parents taking more significant steps to help them compared to their peers, such as intensive learning camps, special education or changing schools.

More safe and less lonely

Importantly, based on the national well-being survey, the educational readiness assessment did not have a negative impact on student well-being. On the contrary, the survey shows that students in both Year 8 and Year 9 who were deemed not ready for further education were significantly more emotionally stable and felt more safe and accepted and less lonely than those of their peers deemed to be ready for further education who just managed to scrape above the grade point average of 4 in Year 8. Søren Albeck Nielsen says the following about this:  

“The positive development may be related to the fact that we’re only looking at students who were declared academically not ready for further education and who subsequently increased their efforts and improved their academic performance. It may also have led to more active participation in class and in the academic class community. For students who were declared not ready for further education due to a lack of personal or social skills, the picture may be different – but that group is not covered by our analysis.”

Facts

We strive to comply with Universities Denmark’s principles for good research communication. For this reason, we provide the following information as a supplement to this article: