Should School Entry Age Be Lowered in Morocco? Evidence from TIMSS 2023

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6463-892-9_37How to use a DOI?

Keywords

School entry age; Educational achievement; Endogeneity; Two-stage least squares (2SLS); Multilevel modeling; TIMSS; Morocco

Abstract

This study examines the effect of early school entry on mathematics achievement among Moroccan fourth-grade students, using data from the 2023 TIMSS assessment. To address both endogeneity and the hierarchical structure of educational data, we implement a three-stage empirical strategy. We begin with an Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model to explore baseline relationships between student characteristics and academic performance. To account for potential endogeneity of early entry (Started School at Age 5 or Younger), we estimate a Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) model using month of birth as an exogenous instrument. Finally, we integrate the corrected values from the 2SLS estimation into a multilevel model that accounts for the nested structure of students within schools. The results show that early entry has no significant impact in the OLS and 2SLS models. However, in the multilevel framework, once both student- and school-level heterogeneity are fully accounted for, starting school at age five becomes statistically significant with a modest negative effect on mathematics performance. These findings reinforce the rationale behind Morocco’s current entry age policy and suggest that early school entry, in its current form, may not be beneficial for student outcomes.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Ibrahim Allali
AU  - Mohammed Bijou
AU  - Lahboub Zouiri
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/11/17
TI  - Should School Entry Age Be Lowered in Morocco? Evidence from TIMSS 2023
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Multidisciplinary Research in Management and Economics (ICMRME 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 631
EP  - 654
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6463-892-9_37
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6463-892-9_37
ID  - Allali2025
ER  -