Double-shift schooling and student success: Quasi-experimental evidence from Europe

•This paper examines student performance during double-shift schooling systems.•We utilize a quasi-experiment where students alternated school blocks every month.•Estimated models include student-class and month fixed effects.•Results suggest a small, precisely estimated drop in grades during afternoon blocks.

School scheduling systems are frequently at the forefront of policy discussions around the world. This paper provides the first causal evidence of student performance during double-shift schooling systems. We exploit a six-year quasi-experiment from a country in Eastern Europe where students alternated between morning and afternoon school blocks every month. We estimate models with student-class and month fixed effects using data on over 260,000 assignment-level grades. We find a small, precisely estimated drop in student performance during afternoon blocks.