The relevance of the school socioeconomic composition and school proportion of repeaters on grade repetition in Brazil: a multilevel logistic model of PISA 2012

Background Grade repetition is the practice of requiring a student who has been in a given grade level for a school year to continue at that level for another year. Grade repetition is a phenomenon that is found in many education systems, either in developed or developing countries (e.g. Brophy 2006). The international literature has shown that grade repetition is a major issue in the debate on how to improve education (Allen et al. 2009; Goos et al. 2013; Hill 2014). The causes and consequences of grade repetition in Brazil have been studied since the middle of the twentieth century (e.g. Almeida 1957; Freitas 1940, 1947). The scientific production and has been quite extensive and mainly published in Brazilian journals (e.g. Fernandes and Natenzon 2003; Freitas 2002; Gomes 2005; Riani et al. 2012; Silva and Davis 1993). For the first time in Brazil, and probably in Latin America, Freitas (1940) analysed census data in the form of students’ flow through the educational system, using the time series 1932–1939 of a 7-year-old child cohort. His analyses showed very high rates of repetition and dropout, i.e., the percentage of 1st grade repeaters varied Abstract