School Calendars and Academic Achievement: Evidence from a Year-Round Schooling Policy in Ghana

• In Event: School Structure and Student Outcomes

Abstract

Decision-makers are increasingly recognizing the importance of continued access to the school environment – often measured by instructional time – on academic achievement. However, because of budgetary pressures and space constraints, schools frequently face a trade-off in the quantity and quality of educational inputs provided. Traditionally, schools have dealt with this by increasing class sizes or restructuring instructional time through the use of modified academic calendars such as adjusting school start times, the four-day school week, and multi-track year-round calendars – where the same number of school days is spread throughout an academic year with students (and their teachers) placed into a specific track, where at least one track is on break at any point in time. Year-round schooling is particularly appealing because it allows schools to accommodate increased enrolment while maximising existing infrastructure. Yet this could come at the cost of losses in educational outcomes, particularly in low-income settings where existing structural deficiencies constrain educational systems.

In this paper, I investigate how student achievement responds to massive and abrupt changes in academic calendars. To identify these effects, I exploit a policy change in Ghana’s education sector that eliminated user fees for secondary school students. This Free Senior High School Policy (FSHSP) resulted in an enormous increase in the number of admitted secondary school students beyond the capacity of the existing infrastructure. A year-round schooling policy - Double Track System (DTS) - was subsequently introduced, which divided some secondary schools and, in effect, students, teachers, and staff into two tracks that rotate on and off break, with each track being in school for two semesters a year. Using a difference-in-difference framework, I exploit variation in the exposure to the double-track system across public senior high schools in the country. I use student-level administrative data on high school exit exam scores of students from 2018 to 2022 to investigate the impact of this policy on academic achievement.

The preliminary findings suggest that this policy generally had no impact on the average academic achievement of students. However, students in double-track schools scored 0.16 standard deviations higher in math compared to students in non-double-track schools before the policy. This positive effect is mostly driven by improved performance among male students.

While year-round schooling is practised in some developed countries, evidence of its impact is both scarce and inconclusive. This study will provide insights into the effects of this policy, particularly in contexts where educational systems may not have the capacity to support large-scale policy changes.

Author

• Deborah Aba Gaisie, Georgia State University
  Presenting Author