Who Holds the Key? School Gatekeeping, Parental Discretion and the Effects of Deviating from School-Entry Rules

In Austria, school entry is set by a birth-date cutoff, but schools decide whether a child is ready for school, and parents can apply for early admission. Using population records for 1.3 million children, we study who deviates from the entry rule and what these deviations do. Schools hold back the disadvantaged: children who do not speak German at home and children from low-income families are deferred far more often, while advantaged parents make most use of early admission, the reverse of the pattern in the United States. In borderline cases, deferral sharply reduces grade repetition in primary school but leaves later track placement and school completion unchanged: it largely shifts a school year that would otherwise be lost to repetition. Early admission, in contrast, raises repetition and lowers enrollment in university-track schools at sixteen.