Working Paper

The Impact of All-Day Schools on Student Achievement - Evidence from Extending School Days in German Primary Schools

Arnim Seidlitz, Larissa Zierow
CESifo, Munich, 2020

CESifo Working Paper No. 8618

This paper studies the effect of longer school days − induced by voluntary all-day programs in German primary schools − on school performance. Facing the challenge of selection into all-day school programs, we instrument all-day school expansion with construction subsidies from a large federal investment project. We combine data from the representative National Educational Panel Study covering more than 5'000 primary school students with municipality-level information on federal subsidies. Results show that all-day programs lead to improvements in language and math grades and to a higher probability of attending the academic track after primary school. Heterogeneity analysis suggests that the programs do not reduce educational inequality.

CESifo Category
Economics of Education
Empirical and Theoretical Methods
Keywords: all-day school, skill development, educational inequality
JEL Classification: J130, I280, I240