Navigating Educational Landscapes: Predictors and Effects of Grade Retention

Within any given class in primary and secondary education, there is typically considerable variation among students. This heterogeneity (especially in terms of achievement) challenges educational practitioners and policy makers in their attempts to guarantee high educational standards and raises the question how to deal with it. In many European countries, students who are not keeping up with their peers or who do not meet a certain predefined achievement level, are requested to repeat their grade, instead of being promoted to the next grade (Eurydice, 2020). More specifically, in 2018, about 1 student out of 3 (Luxembourg), 4 (Portugal, Spain, Belgium), 5 (Germany), or 6 (the Netherlands, Switzerland, France) had been retained at least once by age 15 (Eurydice, 2020), which equals millions of European students per year. Strong beliefs among practitioners about the effectiveness of grade retention for remedial purposes play an important role in this matter.

Research on the effects of grade retention on repeaters’ development, in a variety of countries across the world, however, has revealed this practice to be non-effective. At the same time, research on the predictors of grade retention has shown grade repeaters to be more often low-SES students, ethnic minority students, and disabled students, even keeping student achievement constant, suggesting this practice to be highly unfair. Yet, there is still a lot of controversy among researchers about the theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches used. Moreover, some grade retention topics have hardly been studied so far: effects of grade retention on repeaters’ classmates’ development, grade retention decision-making processes, mediation and moderation processes and implementation of remedial alternatives in practice. This E-CER wants to address these gaps with the following collaborative activities:

• Investigation of grade retention beliefs, practices, predictors, effects, and alternatives in 4 different countries (Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium)
• Dissemination, evaluation and adaptation of tools currently constructed by the ECER team to ease school teams and teachers in applying alternatives for grade retention (on-going Erasmus+)
• Development of several collaborative research proposals for international funding (e.g., WEAVE, Horizon, Erasmus+)