Séminaire externe du LERN – Jeudi 15 octobre à 12h en Salle C3-19 (Campus Pasteur)
Jeudi 15 octobre 2026, nous aurons le plaisir d’écouter Gustave Kenedi (THEMA, CY Cergy Paris Université) qui présentera son papier « Aiming Higher: Teacher Value Added and Higher Education Choices ». (with Nagui Bechichi (PSE) and Julien Grenet (PSE))
Abstract :
Teachers are a central input into the education production function, but evidence on their effects has focused overwhelmingly on test scores and, more recently, on non-cognitive skills. We study whether teachers also shape students’ higher education choices, a particularly consequential and complex decision. France offers a natural setting, with every final-year class assigned a lead teacher (professeur principal) whose formal role includes guiding students through the centralised application platform. Combining the universe of applications to French post-secondary programmes from 2012 to 2023 with administrative records linking students to their lead teachers, we estimate leave-year-out value added across the full sequence of application outcomes: number of applications, ambition of those applications, offers received, and enrolment outcomes. We document substantial variation in lead teachers’ effectiveness along these dimensions, and our preliminary results suggest that assignment to a more effective lead teacher raises the ambition of students’ applications and the selectivity of the programme they attend. Value added on these outcomes is only modestly related to value added on exam grades, suggesting that test-score measures might miss an economically important dimension of teacher quality.