The Effects of Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills on Early School-Leaving

In this paper we investigate how non-cognitive skills can explain individual differences in earlyschool-leaving controlling for cognitive skills. We use a large Dutch representative longitudinalcohort study “Secondary Education Pupil Cohort 1999.” In the first year of this study, personalitywas assessed with the FFPI as part of a comprehensive student questionnaire. Our results show thatwhile cognitive skills play an important role in explaining early school-leaving, non-cognitiveskills such as achievement motivation, conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness to experienceplay an important role as well. In addition, we find that differences in non-cognitive skillsaffect the impact of cognitive skills performance on early school-leaving.