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Objective: We investigated how educational performance during secondary education evolves in the years before, during, and after parental divorce. Background: Theoretical models predict different divorce effect patterns in the school year of the divorce and in the years around it. However, we are not aware of any existing studies attempting to measure this pattern. Method: The study was based on unique panel data capturing parental divorce and school results for 2,685 Belgian pupils. We employed this panel to correct for time‐invariant, unobservable drivers of educational performance, as well as to take into account time‐variant unobserved drivers. Results: The results indicate that the divorce penalty peaks in the school year of the divorce. A zero treatment effect in the preceding and subsequent years cannot be rejected. Moreover, simpler econometric strategies tended to overestimate the divorce penalty. Conclusion: Our findings are mostly in line with the parental adjustment and life stress theories. From a policy perspective, we suggest that it is essential to support children in the months before and after parental divorce, while special treatment in later years may be less necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing evidence that health factors affect tertiary education success in a causal way. This study assesses the effect of sleep quality on academic achievement at university. To this end, we surveyed 804 students about their sleep quality by means of the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) before the start of their first exam period in December 2013 at Ghent University. PSQI scores were merged with course marks in this exam period. Instrumenting PSQI scores by sleep quality during secondary education, we find that increasing total sleep quality with one standard deviation leads to 4.85 percentage point higher course marks. Based on this finding, we suggest that higher education providers might be incentivised to invest part of their resources for social facilities in professional support for students with sleep and other health problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] We decompose ethnic schooling and employment gaps in endowment and pure ethnic parts. [•] We take schooling delay into account and identify when pure ethnic gaps arise. [•] The pure ethnic gap in schooling outcomes if delays are neglected is small. [•] The pure ethnic gap in schooling outcomes if delays are taken into account is substantial. [•] The pure ethnic gap in the school-to-work transition is substantial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To study the causal impact of smartphone use on academic performance, we collected – for the first time worldwide – longitudinal data on students' smartphone use and educational performance. For three consecutive years, we surveyed all students attending classes in 11 different study programmes at two Belgian universities on general smartphone use and other drivers of academic achievement. These survey data were merged with the exam scores of these students. We analysed the resulting data by means of panel data random-effects estimation controlling for unobserved individual characteristics. A 1 SD increase in overall smartphone use results in a decrease of 0.349 points (out of 20) and a decrease of 2.616 percentage points in the fraction of exams passed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Apprenticeships lead to short-term labour market advantages. • These advantages fade out over time. • Advantages are higher for apprenticeship programmes with more in-field training. This study examines the impact of enrolling into dual apprenticeship programmes during secondary education on six early employment outcomes. Our contribution to the literature is threefold. First, we apply a method that has rarely been used in this literature to control for potential selection biases. Second, this method allows us to distinguish between the programmes' direct effect (conditional on educational achievement) and indirect effect (via educational achievement) on labour market outcomes. Third, we examine the impact of two distinct dual apprenticeship programmes in a novel setting: Flanders (Belgium). We find evidence for short-term labour market advantages only for the programme with the most days of on-the-job training, which fade out quickly over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]