The paper investigates the effect of teacher characteristics (experience, level of education attainment and credentials, gender) on the achievement of eighth grade students using matched student-teacher data from the 1999, 2003 and 2007 TIMSS surveys. The analysis covers European countries, thus...

This paper estimates the effect of school starting age on academic performance using the 2006 "National Assessment of Basic Competencies" (NABC), focusing on disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged children. The instrumental variable estimates of the school starting age imply that those who start...

The paper looks at secondary school attendance and grade retention after 8th grade in Hungary. It makes use of panel data of the Hungarian Life Course Survey from 2006 through 2009. Three and a half years after finishing 8th grade, ninety per cent of the children are in school, three quarters on...