In our project, we aimed to tackle this unfair practice by professionalizing European practitioners in primary and secondary education with regard to their grade retention beliefs and practices. As such, we aimed to decrease the number of European at-risk students retained in grade and thus increase the number of at-risk students with a successful school career, in line with the objective of the European Commission to combat school failure.
Within any given class in primary and secondary education, there is typically considerable variation among students. This heterogeneity challenges educational practitioners and policymakers in their attempts to guarantee high educational standards and raises the question how to deal with it. In Europe, many students who are not keeping up with their peers, are requested to repeat their grade, instead of being promoted to the next grade. More specifically, in 2022, in several European countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Germany, Portugal, and Austria, at least 1 out of 6 students reported to have been retained at least once by age 15, equalling millions of Europeans students annually. Strong beliefs about the positive effects of grade retention among practitioners play an important role in this matter. However, international research on the effects of grade retention on repeaters’ development has revealed this practice to be non-effective. At the same time, international research has shown that grade repeaters are overrepresented among low-SES students, ethnic minority students, and disabled students, even keeping student achievement constant, suggesting this practice to be highly unfair.