The organization of schooling differs largely across European countries, especially with regard to full or half day schooling. While some European countries have a long-lasting tradition of all-day schools (i.e. France, UK), others – like Germany, Greece or parts of Italy – organized teaching mainly in half-day schools (Allemann-Ghionda, 2009). Over the last decade some countries change their school system from half-day to all-day schools. A major impetus for the expansion were hopes to promote students’ cognitive and social competencies (Fischer, Kuhn, & Züchner, 2011), compensate for origin-based disadvantages (Züchner & Fischer, 2014), and facilitate a better work-life balance for families (Hagemann, Jarausch, & Allemann-Ghionda, 2014). One of these countries is Germany where, at the moment, different organizational forms of half-day and all-day schools exist at the same time. This offers the opportunity to research conditions, under which achievement related hopes may be fulfilled.

Why should we expect there to be any association between all-day schools and student’s competencies? General models of teaching quality and effectiveness (e.g., Klieme, Lipowsky, Rakoczy, & Ratzka, 2006; Brophy, 2000) do not differentiate between half- and all-day schools in the first place. However, first of all, by expanding the school program, all-day schools are giving students more time to deal with specific learning contents. Providing the possibility of further study in the afternoon hours, these school types are offering tuition and support, or help with homework in a professional way; thus expanding students’ study time (time on task). Furthermore, there is an extended realm of possibility for implementing innovative teaching methods, for achieving a higher level of activation of the students, and, possibly, arousing new interests (Stecher, Klieme, Radisch, & Fischer, 2009). However, students often can choose which extracurricular activities they want to participate in and if they want to participate in the all-day school program at all. Depending on the degree of obligation to participate, there are so-called “binding” and “open” forms of all-day schools. Furthermore, it should be considered that also half-day schools often offer extracurricular (learning) activities that do not necessarily differ from those provided by all-day schools.

Against this background, it is surprising that there are relatively few convincing empirical studies investigating the effects of different organizational forms of (German) all-day schools—in particular with regard to their interrelation with competencies. One possible explanation could be a deficit in the availability of data: Large-scale student assessments (PISA, PIRLS) provide data on competencies but have little or no information on organizational forms regarding all-day schools or on students’ participation in extracurricular activities at school. On the other hand, the available first cycle of the German Study on the Development of All-day schools (StEG) offers no data on competencies and does not include half-day schools.

By contrast, our study does have data on competencies, does not exclude specific school types, and allows us to distinguish between different organizational forms of all-day schools. At the same time, it is also possible to consider information on students’ use of extracurricular activities and to control for selectivity regarding the access to different types of schools and learning opportunities. Therefore, we are addressing an interesting research gap by directing our investigation toward the question of the conditions under which learning is related to students’ competencies in sixth grade.

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