Despite the accumulated evidence that retention is an ineffective and potentially harmful remedial strategy, several countries struggle with high levels of retention in compulsory schooling. This article provides evidence of the impact of the Portuguese national educational policy "Programa Mais Sucesso Escolar" (PMSE) using class size,…

Access to higher education is affected by inequalities worldwide. Here we present a longitudinal study based on large databases of scores in upper secondary education and access to higher education in Portugal. Our findings show how access to higher education builds on and reinforces social inequalities: (1) private, fee-paying secondary schools…

There is great interest in understanding the potential of teacher incentives to improve student achievement. In fact, teacher incentives, either individual or collective, may improve student achievement if they succeed in aligning the public or social goals with the goals of the teacher. However, an approach in which reward is based on outputs can…