More time less time? The effect of lengthening the school day on learning trajectories

Abstract

We investigate to what extent lengthening the primary school days affects learning trajectories. We use national administration reports at the school level to estimate the impact of more school hours on grade retention at the primary level. Using microdata available in Argentina from 2011 to 2019, we use the variation of 1,297 schools that added more hours of instructional time. The fact that the change from a simple regime (4 hours per day) to an extended regime (more than 4 hours but less than 8) was progressively and exogenous, conditional on infrastructure capacity, allows for estimating the effect through a difference-in-difference approach. We find that lengthening the school day reduces the grade retention of primary students by 23.1%.

Keywords: length day, school day, learning trajectories, time.