In Portugal, grade retention is a practice commonly applied to academically struggling students. During the last decades, research on grade retention effectiveness has grown tremendously. However, effects of grade retention on repeaters’ psychosocial outcomes have received less attention from researchers and the results are rather inconclusive. Being retained, however, could constitute a rather negative psychological experience for students, especially in the long run (e.g., Jimerson & Ferguson, 2007; Klapproth et al., 2016; Martin; 2011). Based on data available from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 assessing 15-year-old students’ reading competencies and psychosocial variables (OECD, 2019), we aimed to explore the effects of retention in grades 1 to 9 on Portuguese students’ psychosocial outcomes, at age 15. More specifically, we estimated the effects of retention in grades 1 to 9 on repeaters’ school belonging, self-concept in reading, and motivation (task orientation, self-enhancing orientation, fear of failure, and school utility value) among 1,362 retained students (24%) and 4,262 promoted students (Mage = 15.73, SD = 0.29, 50% boys), attending 6th to 10th grade. Using propensity score matching (Austin, 2011), we were able to reduce the bias between the retained treatment group and the promoted control group in relevant background covariates, such as demographics (gender, age, socioeconomic background, immigration background, educational resources at home), students’ achievement scores, and school-related variables (public vs. private school and school resources), with all covariates presenting standardized mean differences below .10. Then, using 3-level linear regression models, we estimated the effects of grade retention on students’ psychosocial variables at age 15. The results showed that retained students, by the age of 15, present lower levels of school belonging (b = -.11; SE = .03), self-concept in reading (b = -.07; SE = .03), mastery goal orientations (b = -.16; SE = .03), and school utility value (b= -.12; SE = .03). These findings corroborate the results found in previous longitudinal studies (Klapproth et al., 2016; Kretschmann et al., 2019; Martin, 2011), and seem to suggest that grade retention induces a negative cascade and leaves an irreversible mark on students’ sense of academic competence, motivation, and engagement (Jimerson & Ferguson, 2007).

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