Early exposure to foreign language training and students’ educational trajectories

Abstract

We estimate the impact of a large curriculum reform in Switzerland that substantially increased the share of foreign language classes in compulsory school on students’ subsequent educational choices in upper secondary school. Our analysis focuses on students from German-speaking cantons that introduced English as the first foreign language. Using detailed student register data and exploiting the staggered implementation of the curriculum reform, we find that exposure to more foreign language classes has only minor effects on educational trajectories of the overall student population. However, we find substantial effect heterogeneity: while the reform has no effect on the direct educational progression of low-track female or high-track students, it impedes low-track male students’ transition to upper secondary education.