The effects of the calculation class in elementary school on student outcomes

Abstract

We examine the impact of introducing a calculation class on the academic outcomes of elementary school students. The calculation class is characterized by instruction using an abacus (soroban in Japanese), a traditional calculation tool in Asia, and teaching by abacus instructors. The calculation class was introduced with time lags across schools and birth cohorts, which allows us to exploit the difference-in-differences strategy. Using administrative data from Amagasaki City in Japan, we find that the calculation class increases mathematics and Japanese scores by 0.145 and 0.0874 standard deviations, respectively. To explore possible mechanisms, we investigate the impact of the calculation class on students’ non-cognitive skills, academic behaviors at home, and the classroom environment. The results indicate that the calculation class improves non-cognitive skills, such as grit and motivation for studying. Furthermore, we find heterogeneous effects across gender, socioeconomic status (SES), and previous academic scores. Our estimation results show that the calculation class has a larger impact on the mathematics scores of female students, students from low-SES families, and previously low-performing students. Finally, we explore the long-term effects and find that, for female students, the impact tends to persist for one year after the class ends, but after that, the effects fade out.