Development of Students Attending Extracurricular Activities: Compensatory Effects of Extracurricular Activities?

In this paper we examine the development of mathematics achievement in children attending all-day schools who make intensive attendance of extracurricular activities in comparison with mathematics achievement in children who attend only the obligatory school instruction (control group). In addition, we investigated the question of a possible compensatory effect of the all-day school with regard to social disparities. This was a quasi-experimental longitudinal study of a sample of N = 295 students at 35 primary schools in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, in the first three years of school. The results show that the all-day school had a positive effect on the development of students' achievement in mathematics from grade 1 to grade 3. No compensatory effect of the all-day school was found with regard to families that do not actively promote and stimulate learning in the first three years of primary school.