Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/45719 
Year of Publication: 
2009
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 2009:6
Publisher: 
Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation (IFAU), Uppsala
Abstract: 
The Finnish comprehensive school reform replaced the old two-track school system with a uniform nine-year comprehensive school and significantly reduced the degree of heterogeneity in the Finnish primary and secondary education. We estimate the effect of this reform on the test scores in the Finnish Army Basic Skills test. The identification strategy relies on a differences-in-differences strategy and exploits the fact that the reform was implemented gradually across the country during a six-year period between 1972 and 1977. We find that the reform had a small positive effect on the verbal test scores but no effect on the mean performance in the arithmetic or logical reasoning tests. Still in all tests the reform improved the scores of students from families where parents had only basic education.
Subjects: 
Education
school system
tracking
comprehensive school
test scores
JEL: 
H52
I21
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size
469.84 kB





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.