The effects of the 2004 Minority Education Reform on pupils’ performance in Latvia

One quarter of all school children in Latvia go to the publicly funded minority (predominantly Russian) schools. In 2004, the language of instruction in minority schools was changed from essentially minority language to a composite of 60% Latvian and 40% minority. This paper studies the effects of this "60/40" reform on the academic performance of pupils in minority schools. We find that there has been a significant deterioration in the exam performance of minority schools relative to that of majority schools after the reform year 2004.