The Impacts of Transition to Middle School on Student Cognitive, Non-Cognitive and Perceptual Developments: Evidence from China

Abstract

Middle school is an important period of development for students. Middle schools in China are either separate schools after grade six or incorporated in the same school complex with the elementary school. Students who attend separate elementary and middle schools change schools more often than other students, and this additional school change can affect academic and non-academic developments. We examine the effect of the transition to a separate middle school after grade six on student cognitive, non-cognitive, and perceptual developments in China. We use an approach that combines the propensity score method and discrete factor approximation to address the endogeneity of the transition to a separate middle school. We find that transitioning students who move from elementary school to middle school after grade six are more likely to develop bad learning habits than non-transitioning students who do not change schools. Transitioning students, however, receive more attention from teachers. The lower performance of transitioning students on the first exam in middle school only partly explains these observed transitional effects on student developments.

Keywords: China, Economics of Education, Grade Configuration, Cognition, Non-Cognitive Development

JEL Classification: I21, I28, H52