The Impact of Placement Exams on Refugee Children's School Enrollment

• In Event: Migration and Peer Effects

Abstract

Between 2010 and 2024, the number of displaced children worldwide nearly tripled, reaching almost 50 million. When enrolling displaced children, schools can face different challenges: absence of school documents, language differences, and prolonged gaps in education. While placement exams can help to assess students’ pre-enrollment knowledge and inform grade assignment, they may also work as an extra barrier to accessing education. This paper studies the effects of introducing mandatory placement exams on school enrollment of Venezuelan refugee children in Northern Brazil. We explore a triple difference framework using the policy's geographic implementation and its targeted age range (8 to 14). Using national administrative enrollment data, we find that the policy has reduced school enrollment of around 1,000 targeted refugee children between 2020 and 2024. Importantly, using unique exam registry administrative data, we find that the main obstacle was not families failing to register their children for the exam, but high absenteeism caused by long waiting times and difficulties reaching families to inform exam’s date and time.

Author

• Carlos Brito, University of California, Davis
  Presenting Author