When there's no exams, students' exam nervousness is lower

I just read this new article by Yoosik Shin (Korea University), published in the journal Economics and Human Biology (sorry I don't see an ungated version online). It might win a prize for the most obvious conclusion, but I'll get to that in a moment. Shin investigates the impact of South Korea's 'Free Semester' (FS) in middle school (and if you're wondering why I read the paper, it's because I misinterpreted the title, and thought it might provide some insights into the impacts of making a semester free in monetary terms, like New Zealand's first year fees free at university). The FS is:

...a one-semester program targeting middle school students. During this semester, students experience a variety of learning modalities and career exploration activities... One of the key features of this program is that written tests or examinations are not taken during this semester. That is, there is no formal grading of exams, which might affect students’ entry to high school, during this semester.

The FS is usually implemented in the second semester of the first year of middle school. The purpose of the FS is to:

...enhance the happiness of students by providing them the opportunities to explore their dreams and aptitudes, without being overwhelmed by the burden of exams...

Apparently, there are debates as to whether the FS increases students' mental wellbeing, or whether it simply increases pressures in the remaining middle school years. Shin uses data from the Korean Education Longitudinal Study 2013, which followed students who were in fifth grade (the second-to-last year of elementary school) in 2013. The dataset includes over 5700 students. When the FS was rolled out, these students were in middle school, but not all encountered the FS. Shin uses this difference in exposure to the FS to implement a difference-in-differences analysis (comparing the difference in exam nervousness, which is measured each year in the sample, before and after the FS was implemented, between students who were and were not affected by it.

Their main findings are easily summarised in Figure 1 from the paper:

Treated and control studies had similar trends in exam nervousness at elementary school, but then in the first year of middle school (when they were exposed to the FS), exam nervousness was lower for those that had the FS than those that did not. However, there was no medium-term impact, as by the second year of middle school both treatment and control students were similar in exam nervousness again. As you can see, it seems obvious. Interestingly, a subgroup analysis shows that the effects are only statistically significant for high-achieving students. When you consider that high-achieving students are more likely to be anxious about their exam performance, that result seems obvious too.

What is interesting is this bit from the conclusion:

...middle schools are now encouraged to apply the learning systems and progress-based evaluation philosophy of the FS to regular semesters.

It would be interesting to see whether students in schools that applied the FS system across multiple semesters (rather than one) differed in high school academic performance from those that experience only one FS semester. That is a more question with a potentially more ambiguous, and more policy relevant, answer.