The democratization and expansion of education have allowed a growing segment of the global population to pursue a degree in higher education (Välimma and Hoffman, 2008). As a result, obtaining a postsecondary degree has become pivotal to achieve social mobility on the labor market. An unforeseen downside of the democratization is that the increase in number of people with a post-secondary degree has led to more stigmatization and fewer chances on the labor market for those who lack such a degree (Solga, 2002). Therefore, it is necessary to identify potential predictors of enrollment in higher education, as it will yield a deeper understanding of what impacts the chances of realizing social mobility.

There are reasons to assume that grade retention could be one of those predictors. Previous studies have found that being retained leads to a drastically higher chance of dropping out unqualified (Jimerson, 2001). Dropout rates are three to seven times higher among retainees when controlled for sociodemographic factors and academic achievement (Fine and Davis, 2003). Hence, we know that grade retention decreases the likelihood of obtaining a degree in secondary education. What remains understudied, however, is what happens after secondary education to retained students who did successfully obtain a secondary degree. This is remarkable, as mapping the post-educational trajectory of retainees could gain insight on the long-term effectivity of grade retention.

According to the self-efficacy theory of Bandura (1977), experiences of mastery, which arise from successful performance, lead to a higher self-efficacy, which is the individual’s belief in his/her capacity to execute behaviors that are required to succeed a specific task. Being retained, however, is often perceived as an academic failure and is a visible marker of underperformance (Alexander et al., 2002; Jimerson, 2001), which could render retainees to have a lower self-efficacy. The decreased self-efficacy, in turn, would trigger risk avoidance behavior in which the retained student wishes to evade new, potential experiences of failure during higher education. Moreover, being retained is associated with a lower academic self-concept (Van Canegem et al., 2021).

Based on the self-efficacy theory, we expect that students who were retained in secondary education will have a decreased self-efficacy, leading to a lower likelihood of enrolling in higher education. Moreover, it is hypothesized that retainees will be more likely to enroll in a college of applied sciences instead of a university than their non-retained peers. Via a mediation effect, self-efficacy is expected to be the causal mechanism that explains these hypothesized differences in the post-secondary educational trajectories between retained and non-retained students.

Finally, the relationship between grade retention and post-secondary outcomes is contextualized by accounting for school retention composition. Based on earlier studies (Demanet and Van Houtte, 2016; Van Canegem et al., 2021), we expect that grade retention becomes a less impactful experience in (school) contexts where it is applied the most. In his work on the social cognitive theory, Bandura (2001) states that a triad exists in which beliefs, context and behavior are all interdependent. Hence, following this assumption, behavior (such as enrollment in higher education) is impacted by both beliefs (such as self-efficacy) and the context (in casu; the school retention composition). Therefore, retainees are likely to compare and evaluate their own educational trajectory with the trajectory of other, non-retained students. This would result in a negative evaluation, and thus, lead to a decreased self-efficacy and a lower likelihood of entering higher education.

Data were obtained from the International Study of City Youth (ISCY)-dataset, a cross-national and longitudinal study, which was conducted in 14 cities across the world and specifically aimed to follow students’ educational trajectories throughout high school and post-secondary education. For the current study, we used data from Ghent, a relatively large city in Flanders (the northern part of Belgium). We combined data from the baseline survey and the fifth wave, which captured students' post-secondary education positions three years after graduating from high school. Such a longitudinal design allows us to test for causality. The final dataset consisted of 1,252 respondents in 30 schools. The contextualized impact of grade retention upon the post-educational trajectory is assessed by performing multilevel analyses. Stepwise multilevel analyses were conducted, using MLwiN. Conventional multiple regression techniques would lead to an overestimation of the effects at higher levels, as educational systems have a nested data structure. This means that students are nested within schools. The moderation effect of school retention composition was estimated by including cross-level interaction terms.

The results of the first model demonstrated that being retained decreases the likelihood of attending university three years after graduating from high school. Moreover, high schools’ retention composition significantly influences students’ higher education trajectories in terms of attending higher education. Students who attend high schools with a larger share of retainees were less likely to attend university in comparison to their peers in schools with a low retention composition. This effect holds true beyond the individual effect of being retained. In order to investigate its potential to explain grade retention and/or retention composition effects, self-efficacy was added. The results showed that students’ self-efficacy beliefs in 10th grade impact their higher education decisions. A high self-efficacy leads to a higher likelihood to attend university three years after graduating from high school. The effect of individual grade retention diminished to the extent that it became insignificant, indicating that self-efficacy potentially mediates grade retention effects on institution type three years after graduating high school. A significant Sobel test confirmed the existence of such a mediation effect. Cross-level interaction effects were integrated to assess whether the effect of being retained led to a lower likelihood of enrolling in university over enrolling in colleges of applied sciences. The difference in higher education enrollment between retainees and non-retainees is the largest in schools with a low retention composition. The cross-level interaction term was significantly positive, meaning that being retained becomes less impactful for university attendance over attending a college of applied science in contexts where being retained is a normalized practice. This confirms the school composition moderation hypothesis. Overall, the findings of this study add to the growing amount of research that questions the desirability and long-term effectivity of maintaining grade retention as a common educational intervention.

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