The school advice Dutch children receive at the end of primary school is influenced by how they rank compared with their classmates, even when their test scores are identical, according to research by the Erasmus School of Economics.

Moving up around three places in the class ranking increases a pupil’s chance of a vwo recommendation, the highest stream, by about 2.5 percentage points. On the other hand, children near the bottom of their class are more likely to be advised to go to vmbo (the lowest stream), regardless of their actual ability.

The advice pupils are given at around age 12 largely determines which type of secondary school they can attend, and the study found that ranking children early on impacts their chances of going to university.

The research suggests teachers use rank as a shortcut because judging absolute ability is hard, while comparing classmates is easy.

The effect was stronger among more experienced teachers, and teachers proved more sensitive to the rankings of children from low-income families and ethnic minority backgrounds, who were more likely to be given lower advice than equally scoring children from better-off homes.

Earlier research has shown that girls and children outside the big cities also tend to receive lower advice than their scores warrant.