Is a more selective exit exam related to shadow education use? An analysis of two cohorts of final-year secondary school students in the Netherlands.

The prevalence of private supplementary tutoring (i.e. shadow education) is growing, particularly in nations with selective school exams. The hypothesis that tutoring attendance rises as pressure to perform increases has not yet been tested. Therefore, our research question is: does the likelihood of attending shadow education increase with an increase in educational system selectivity (in this case: stricter requirements to graduate)? Our study used an opportunity to study this question in the Dutch context, where performance standards on the nationwide secondary education exit exam were raised in 2011. We used data from two cohorts of Dutch exam year students: one before and one after the raised selectivity, hypothesising that the latter group had a higher likelihood of attending shadow education than the former. Results from Propensity Score Matching (PSM), applied to obtain cohorts as similar as possible on observable characteristics, provide support for our hypothesis. Our results on the Dutch policy change confirm that shadow education use might emerge at key moments of selection. In doing so, our study suggests that policymakers and researchers may want to include shadow education use in discussions on the merits and pitfalls of introducing more stringent performance standards into the education system.