Abstract

This paper studies the effect of longer school days -- induced by voluntary all-day programs in German primary schools -- on school performance. Facing the challenge of selection into all-day school programs, we instrument all-day school expansion with construction subsidies from a large federal investment project. We combine data from the representative National Educational Panel Study covering more than 5'000 primary school students with municipality-level information on federal subsidies. Results show that all-day programs lead to improvements in language and math grades and to a higher probability of attending the academic track after primary school. There are further certain positive peer effects on students with classmates in all-day programs. Heterogeneity analysis suggests that the programs do not reduce educational inequality.