Long-Term Impacts of Class Size in Compulsory School

Abstract

Abstract:How does class size in compulsory school affect peoples' long run education and earnings? We use maximum class size rules and Norwegian administrative registries allowing us to observe outcomes up to age 48. We do not find any indication of beneficial effects of class size reduction in compulsory school. For a 1 person reduction in class size we can rule out effects on income as small as 0.087 percent in primary school and 0.12 percent in middle school. Population differences in parental background, school size or competitive pressure do not appear to reconcile our findings with previous studies. Keywords

Do Smaller Classes Always Improve Students’ Long‐run Outcomes?

“…We find insignificant effects of class size in grade 8–10 on educational attainment and income. While this is in contrast to the previous papers on long‐run effects, it is in accordance with the findings in the short run for Norway and the long‐run effect in Leuven and Løkken (). Moreover, we find no evidence that class size effects vary with school district characteristics.…”

“… These operationalizations differ somewhat from Leuven and Løkken (). While we measure the outcomes the last year with available data, creating a cross‐section on individual data, Leuven and Løkken use yearly data, creating an individual panel‐data.…”

“…For Denmark, Browning and Heinesen () find that lower class size in grade 8 increases the probability of completing high school and years of education, and Heinesen () finds a positive effect of subject‐specific class size in lower secondary education in a student fixed effects framework. In addition, Leuven and Løkken () find no long‐run effect of class size in primary education in Norway. This evidence clearly suggests that our use of class size in lower secondary education (grades 8–10) cannot explain the different results between Norway and the other Scandinavian countries.…”

“…Several hypotheses of heterogeneous effects across school districts are derived and tested. Leuven and Løkken () explore similar Norwegian data, estimating the effect of class size both in primary and lower secondary education. Their analysis utilizes that some schools include grade 1–10 and estimates the effect of class size in primary education in addition to the effect in lower secondary education, assuming that the students stayed in the same school during all school years.…”

7 Er det sammenheng mellom skolemiljø og elevenes leseferdigheter?

“…Tidligere forskning på klassestørrelse er imidlertid sammensatt. Mens enkelte studier finner at mindre klasser resulterer i at elevene laerer mer (Blatchford, 2003;Finn & Achilles, 1999;Fredriksson, Öckert & Oosterbeck, 2013), finner andre studier liten eller ingen sammenheng mellom klassestørrelse og elevprestasjoner (se for eksempel Falch, Sandsør & Strøm, 2017;Hoxby, 2000;Leuven & Løkken, 2017 Laerers vurdering av orden og trygghet -Middels IS bing, eller (iii) at faglig svake elever er mer utsatt for mobbing, og jevnlig mobbing ytterligere forverrer disse elevenes skoleprestasjoner. Vi ser også at foreldrenes vurdering av skolen har sammenheng med elevenes leseforståelse.…”