Is There Life After Grade Repetition? Academic Trajectories and Educational Inequalities among Repeaters in the Context of Northern Italy

Grade repetition, by which we mean the practice that denies underperforming students to proceed through school grades, has been a matter of debate for parents, teachers, and experts. Despite its extensive use in Italian high schools, little (if anything) is known of the subsequent academic trajectories of those who repeat the same class. By processing a unique panel dataset, this paper describes the academic outcomes of a full cohort of high school repeaters enrolled in the North of Italy and investigates the association between parental background (educational attainment and migration background) and repeaters’ trajectories. The analysis reveals that retained students from a more privileged background have a higher chance of remaining enrolled in school and they also tend not to switch to a less academic curriculum, compared to those repeaters that have family from less privileged background.