Targeting Noncognitive Skills to Improve Cognitive Outcomes: Evidence from a Remedial Education Intervention

We study an education intervention targeting underachieving pupils' noncognitive skills with the aim of improving attendance and cognitive outcomes. We evaluate the policy effect on test scores in national exams at age 16 exploiting repeated observations to control for unobservables. We find little evidence of improved cognitive outcomes. We further examine the policy impact on students' absences. Lacking repeated observations on this outcome, we simulate the effect of unobservables on attendance. While the intervention had beneficial effects on school presence, these did not translate to improved cognitive outcomes. Conversely, the policy generated positive spillover effects on nontreated students' test scores.