How Education Works | Grade Progression, Promotion, Repetition & Over-Age Recovery — How Systems Decide Whether a Learner Moves Forward

HEW-NODE-0234 · How Education Works · Grade progression, promotion, repetition and over-age recovery

At the end of a school year, education systems must answer a deceptively simple question:

Does this learner move to the next grade?

The answer can affect age, friendships, curriculum sequence, family expectations, school capacity, public spending, confidence, dropout risk and the learner’s eventual completion date.

Some systems promote almost all learners automatically and provide additional support when learning is weak. Others permit or require grade repetition when students do not meet defined academic, attendance or other criteria. Many systems sit between those positions: repetition is legally possible but restricted, treated as exceptional, limited to certain grades or allowed only after other interventions have been tried.

This is not merely a school administrative rule. It is a system design choice about how education responds when the learner and the grade-level curriculum are no longer aligned.

This page owns that mechanism.

Its boundary is deliberate. Tiered Academic Intervention & Progress Monitoring owns support intensity before and during difficulty. Learning Recovery & Acceleration owns system repair of unfinished learning. Dropout Early Warning, Student Re-Engagement & Return-to-Learning owns prevention and reversal of educational exit. Assessment owns evidence of learning. This node owns the formal progression decision: promotion, conditional promotion, repetition, age-grade alignment, appeal and the rules that move learners through the school structure.

Quick Answer

Define the learning and participation expectations for each grade → collect valid evidence across the year → identify students at risk before the end-of-year decision → provide support while progression remains recoverable → apply transparent promotion rules → use repetition only where the policy permits and the expected benefit outweighs the harm → give learners and families notice and review rights → attach an instructional plan to every non-standard progression decision → monitor over-age status, repetition and completion → distinguish late entry from repetition → create catch-up and acceleration routes → review whether progression policies are improving learning or simply moving bottlenecks to later grades.

A strong progression system therefore does not reduce the question to “pass or fail.” It asks what educational arrangement gives the learner the strongest chance of mastering the next stage without creating avoidable delay or hidden failure.

Promotion Is a Curriculum Decision Made About a Person

A grade is a position in the curriculum sequence. Promotion means the system believes the learner should move into the next position.

That can be based on:

• overall achievement;
• achievement in specified core subjects;
• course credits;
• attendance;
• teacher judgment;
• school leadership decision;
• standardised assessments;
• completion of required work;
• or automatic age-based progression.

Different systems use different combinations. The rule should be clear enough that learners know what is expected before the decision arrives.

Grade Repetition Is Not the Same as Remediation

Repetition keeps a learner in the same formal grade for another year.

Remediation provides extra instruction to address missing learning.

The two can be combined, but repeating a year without changing the instruction simply gives the learner another exposure to the same system that did not work the first time.

Any repetition policy should therefore answer a harder question than “Was the score low?” It should answer: What will be different during the repeated year?

Automatic Promotion Is Not the Same as Ignoring Learning Gaps

Automatic or social promotion moves learners forward without making grade repetition the main response to weak attainment.

This approach can reduce age distortion and the risks associated with repetition. It becomes weak policy when promotion occurs without serious support, allowing foundational gaps to accumulate until later grades become impossible.

The real alternative to repetition is not “move everyone and hope.” It is progression plus support.

Current OECD Evidence Shows How Different Systems Make This Choice

OECD’s Education at a Glance 2025 reports that grade repetition remains uncommon in many primary and lower-secondary systems and is legally restricted or rarely used in others. It notes that several systems rely on remedial support rather than routine repetition, while countries that historically used repetition more heavily have increasingly restricted it.

The reason is not administrative fashion. Research summarised by OECD associates repetition below upper-secondary level with poorer academic and later education outcomes on average, more negative attitudes toward school and higher dropout risk, even after accounting for several background factors.

That evidence does not prove that every individual repetition decision is harmful. It does mean repetition should carry a higher evidence burden than “the student failed, therefore repeat.”

UNESCO’s 2026 Monitoring Shows Why Repetition Matters at System Scale

The 2026 Global Education Monitoring Report links falling repetition rates to progress in completion and highlights the way late entry and repetition create over-age enrolment and delayed completion. It also warns that automatic promotion without remedial support can merely postpone dropout.

This is the system-level paradox:

Hold learners back too readily and the system creates delay, stigma, cost and dropout risk. Move learners forward without repairing learning and the system may create hidden failure at the next level.

Progression policy has to solve both sides.

The Best Time to Solve a Progression Problem Is Before Promotion Day

If a school discovers in the final week that a learner is two years behind in reading, the progression decision is being asked to solve a problem the support system should have detected earlier.

Early warning can use:

• classroom assessment;
• screening;
• attendance;
• work completion;
• teacher observation;
• course credits;
• progress monitoring;
• family communication.

The purpose is to create months of intervention time before the high-stakes progression decision.

Promotion Criteria Should Match the Purpose of the Grade

A rule can be clear and still be poorly designed.

If promotion depends on an average score across all subjects, a learner may compensate for severe reading weakness with strong performance elsewhere. If every subject must be passed independently, one narrow weakness can block the entire year.

Systems should decide which competencies are truly prerequisites for the next grade and which can continue developing after promotion.

Core-Subject Rules Need a Theory of Prerequisites

Literacy and numeracy often have strong cumulative structure. Weakness can compound because later learning assumes earlier skills.

That does not automatically justify repetition. It strengthens the case for intensive intervention, summer learning, tutoring, targeted scheduling or other support attached to progression.

Attendance Can Be a Progression Criterion, but Absence Has Causes

A learner who misses half the year may not have had enough instructional exposure to master the curriculum.

Yet absence can arise from illness, disability, caring responsibilities, displacement, transport failure, family poverty or school refusal linked to safety.

A rigid attendance threshold can punish the symptom while ignoring the barrier. Progression rules should distinguish avoidable non-participation from documented circumstances and ask whether learning evidence can be recovered through other routes.

Behaviour Should Be Handled Carefully in Academic Progression

Some systems allow behaviour or conduct to influence promotion.

This creates a conceptual problem: repeating a year is primarily an academic and developmental intervention. If behaviour is the issue, the system should explain how repetition is expected to improve it and whether disciplinary or support mechanisms would be more appropriate.

Teacher Judgment Is Valuable but Needs Shared Standards

Teachers see effort, independence, classroom performance, maturity and learning patterns that a test may miss.

Judgment can become inconsistent across schools if there are no moderation processes or criteria. Comparable cases should not receive radically different progression decisions because one teacher is risk-averse and another is permissive.

Standardised Tests Can Inform Progression Without Owning It

A standardised assessment can provide comparable evidence. It can also contain measurement error and capture only part of the curriculum.

High-stakes progression based on one score near a cut point can create misclassification. The existing Assessment Classification Consistency & Decision Accuracy node explains why decisions around thresholds should acknowledge uncertainty.

Borderline Cases Need a Review Window

When a learner is near the progression threshold, additional evidence can be more useful than automatic repetition.

Possible review evidence includes:

• portfolio work;
• recent improvement;
• teacher moderation;
• diagnostic assessment;
• attendance context;
• support history;
• family input;
• readiness for targeted support in the next grade.

Conditional Promotion Creates a Middle Route

Some learners can move forward under a formal support plan rather than repeat.

Conditional promotion might require:

• summer programme completion;
• tutoring;
• additional literacy or numeracy blocks;
• reassessment of specific competencies;
• reduced elective load;
• progress review after the first term.

The support must be real. A label without additional instructional capacity simply transfers the problem.

Summer Learning Can Repair a Narrow Gap Without Repeating a Whole Year

If a learner is weak in one subject or a small set of prerequisites, a targeted holiday or intersession programme may be more proportionate than repeating every subject.

The programme should diagnose the specific gap and reassess it afterward. Attendance alone is not evidence that the gap closed.

Course-Level Recovery Can Be Better Than Grade-Level Repetition

In secondary systems organised by courses or credits, a learner may repeat one course while progressing in others.

This preserves momentum and avoids requiring the learner to redo material already mastered. Timetabling and prerequisite chains become more complex, but the intervention is more precise.

Repeating the Whole Grade Is a Very Large Dose

Grade repetition changes approximately a year of the learner’s life.

That size of intervention should be reserved for cases where the system has reason to believe an additional year in the grade, with a different educational plan, is more beneficial than progression with support.

Repetition Should Come With an Individual Instructional Plan

If a learner repeats, the system should identify:

• what was not mastered;
• why;
• what instruction will change;
• what additional support will be provided;
• how progress will be monitored;
• when the decision will be reviewed;
• how social and emotional effects will be managed.

Without this plan, repetition risks becoming simple time extension.

Age-Grade Misalignment Has Cumulative Effects

A learner who repeats once becomes older than many classmates. A learner who entered school late and repeats may be several years over-age.

Over-age status can matter because:

• social fit changes;
• adolescents may be placed with much younger children;
• family expectations about work increase;
• legal age limits can affect eligibility;
• dropout risk may rise;
• completion arrives later.

Late Entry and Repetition Need to Be Separated in Data

Two over-age students may have very different histories.

One started school three years late and has never repeated. Another entered on time and repeated twice. Their support needs and policy causes differ.

EMIS should preserve entry age, grade history, repetition status and transfer information well enough to distinguish them.

UIS Repetition Indicators Depend on Clean Student-Flow Data

UNESCO Institute for Statistics defines repetition through cohort movement between school years and warns that over-reporting enrolment, misclassifying new entrants and transfers can bias repetition estimates.

This matters because a poor data system can make a progression policy look better or worse than it is.

Repetition Rate Is Not the Same as Failure Rate

A system may have many learners below grade expectations and very low repetition because promotion is automatic.

Another system may have higher repetition because rules enforce retention.

Comparing repetition rates without learning outcomes can therefore mislead. Progression policy and learning quality must be read together.

Low Repetition Can Be Good or Bad

Low repetition can indicate strong teaching, early intervention and effective progression.

It can also indicate automatic promotion without mastery.

The system needs supporting evidence: learning, attendance, completion and later-grade performance.

High Repetition Can Be a Signal of Upstream Failure

If a large share of Grade 4 repeats every year, the problem may not be the learners.

The system should investigate:

• curriculum difficulty;
• teacher supply;
• language of instruction;
• attendance;
• assessment design;
• textbook availability;
• school calendar;
• transition from the previous grade;
• poverty and access barriers.

Repetition data can be a sensor for a broken grade transition.

Equity Analysis Is Essential

OECD and UNESCO evidence shows repetition and over-age patterns can fall disproportionately on disadvantaged learners.

Systems should examine repetition by:

• income or socio-economic status;
• sex;
• disability;
• language;
• migration status;
• race or ethnicity where lawful and relevant;
• region;
• school type.

A formally neutral promotion rule can still produce unequal outcomes if earlier educational opportunity is unequal.

Language of Instruction Can Look Like Academic Failure

A learner may fail a grade because the school language is still developing rather than because the underlying concepts are absent.

The new Language of Instruction, Multilingual Transition & Learning Access node owns that mechanism. Progression decisions should distinguish language access from subject mastery where policy permits.

Disability and Progression Require Reasonable Adjustment

A learner should not repeat a grade simply because assessment conditions failed to provide an accommodation that should have been available.

The Assessment Access Arrangements, Reasonable Adjustments & Special Consideration node owns fair assessment conditions. Progression systems should ensure the evidence underlying the decision was itself valid.

Special Education Placement Should Not Be Used as a Repetition Alternative Without Need

When a learner struggles academically, systems may be tempted to move them into a different programme simply to solve the progression problem.

Specialised provision should be based on identified educational needs, not as an administrative escape from grade-level support obligations.

Family Consultation Matters Because the Consequences Are Personal

Families know health, mobility, trauma, language, caring responsibilities and other circumstances that may not be visible in marks.

Consultation should not mean families alone carry the decision. It means the school considers relevant context and explains the evidence, alternatives and support plan.

Student Voice Matters More for Older Learners

An adolescent who may repeat a grade is directly affected socially and educationally.

Systems can hear the learner’s perspective on barriers, preferred supports and commitment to recovery. Participation does not automatically give the learner a veto, but excluding them from the decision entirely can reduce motivation and trust.

Notice Should Arrive Before the Final Decision

Families should not discover on the last day of school that repetition is being considered.

A fair process includes early warnings, documented support, progress reviews and enough time to respond before the decision becomes irreversible.

Appeals Protect Against Error and Inconsistency

Where policy provides appeal rights, the reviewing body should be able to examine whether:

• rules were applied correctly;
• evidence was accurate;
• required support was provided;
• reasonable adjustments were made;
• relevant circumstances were considered;
• the decision was within policy.

The appeal should not merely ask the original decision-maker to restate the same conclusion.

Progression Decisions Need Data Correction Routes

An incorrect attendance record, missing assessment result or duplicate student identity can distort the progression decision.

The Learner Record Correction, Data Rectification & Dispute Resolution node owns the data repair mechanism. High-stakes progression should pause when material evidence is under credible dispute.

Progression Policy Affects School Capacity

If repetition rises sharply in one grade, the next year begins with a larger cohort occupying places that would otherwise serve new entrants.

High repetition can therefore create classroom crowding, teacher demand and textbook pressure.

Progression is partly an instructional policy and partly a student-flow policy.

Repetition Has a Fiscal Cost

A repeated year consumes another year of teacher time, classroom space, materials and public funding.

That does not mean repetition should never occur. It means the intervention should be evaluated against alternatives such as tutoring, targeted summer learning, acceleration or additional support in the next grade.

Progression Policy Can Distort Teacher and School Incentives

If school performance is judged partly by promotion rates, schools may feel pressure to promote learners regardless of mastery.

If accountability focuses on pass rates, schools may push weak learners toward repetition or exclusion before examinations.

Metrics should be designed so schools are rewarded for real learning and successful support, not for manipulating student flow.

Grade Repetition Can Be Hidden by Transfers

A student may repeat the same grade after moving school and be recorded as a new entrant rather than a repeater.

Stable learner identity and transfer records are necessary for accurate cohort-flow analysis.

Over-Age Learners Need Acceleration Pathways, Not Only More Repetition

A fifteen-year-old in an early primary grade may face social and practical barriers that cannot be solved by repeatedly applying the ordinary age-grade model.

Alternative pathways can combine foundational learning with accelerated curriculum, flexible schedules and age-appropriate materials.

The Flexible Learning Pathways & Second-Chance Education node owns those wider routes.

Acceleration Is Not Skipping Learning

Well-designed acceleration prioritises essential knowledge, integrates related content and uses more efficient pacing for older learners.

It does not simply move the learner to the age-appropriate grade without support.

Transition Between Education Levels Is Another Progression Gate

Moving from primary to lower secondary, or lower to upper secondary, often involves examinations, certificates, school applications or programme choices.

UNESCO’s 2026 monitoring notes that examinations and certification requirements can become transition bottlenecks. Progression policy therefore extends beyond annual grade movement into the handoff between levels.

Transition Support Should Begin Before the Boundary

If large numbers fail the same leaving examination or cannot access the next level, the system should not treat each failure as isolated.

It should investigate curriculum alignment, assessment standards, school capacity, guidance, costs and prerequisite knowledge.

Credit Accumulation Changes the Progression Model

Some secondary systems allow learners to accumulate subject credits rather than pass or repeat a whole grade.

This creates flexibility but requires strong records, prerequisite rules and timetable options. A learner may be advanced in mathematics and behind in language without being forced into one all-or-nothing grade status.

Modular Progression Can Reduce the Size of Failure

The smaller the unit of progression, the more precisely the system can target repair.

Modules, credits and competency units can reduce the need to repeat mastered content. They also create administrative complexity and can fragment learning if poorly coordinated.

Automatic Promotion Requires Stronger Monitoring, Not Less

If repetition is rare, the system needs excellent information about whether learners are keeping pace.

Otherwise the first visible crisis may appear several grades later.

Screening, classroom assessment, tiered intervention and longitudinal learner records become more important because promotion no longer acts as an obvious signal.

Repetition Systems Also Need Strong Monitoring

If repetition is allowed, the system should know:

• who repeats;
• in which grades;
• for which subjects or reasons;
• how often;
• what support was provided;
• whether repeaters improve;
• whether they later drop out;
• whether some schools repeat far more students than comparable schools.

School-Level Outliers Need Contextual Review

A school with unusually high repetition may have weak instruction, strict standards, a highly disadvantaged intake, language barriers or unreliable data.

The outlier is a question, not a verdict.

Policy Change Needs Cohort Tracking

If a country restricts repetition, early indicators may show a rapid fall in repeaters.

The real test comes later:

• Did learning improve?
• Did later-grade failure rise?
• Did dropout fall?
• Did support systems expand?
• Did completion become more timely?
• Did inequality narrow?

Student-flow reform should be evaluated over several cohorts, not celebrated after one administrative indicator moves.

Worked Case: A Grade 3 Reader Is Far Behind

A Grade 3 student reads far below grade expectation but is progressing in mathematics and has strong attendance.

A simple repetition rule would require the whole year again. Instead, the school uses intensive reading intervention, summer support and conditional promotion into Grade 4 with a protected daily literacy block and progress checks every six weeks.

The learner moves forward socially and academically while the weak domain receives more—not less—attention.

Worked Case: Repetition May Be Justified

A younger learner experienced prolonged illness and missed most of the school year. Despite home support, the learner has had very limited exposure to the curriculum and is developmentally comfortable with the current age group.

After consultation, review of alternatives and a documented plan, the school decides another year in the grade offers a stronger educational path than immediate promotion. The repeated year includes targeted catch-up rather than simple duplication.

The point is not that repetition is always wrong. It is that the reason and plan must be educationally explicit.

Worked Case: A School Repeats Too Many Students

One district school repeats 18% of Grade 7 students while comparable schools repeat 3%.

Review finds that the school uses a locally created final examination as an absolute gate and provides little intervention before year end. The district moderates the assessment, introduces early progress review and requires evidence of support before repetition can be recommended.

Repetition falls, but the district continues monitoring next-grade performance to ensure the reform did not simply lower standards.

Worked Case: Automatic Promotion Creates Hidden Failure

A system bans repetition in early primary school but does not provide remedial teaching. Grade 5 teachers discover large numbers of students unable to read grade-level texts.

The repair is not to reintroduce routine repetition immediately. The system builds early screening, structured literacy support, tutoring and catch-up blocks so automatic progression is paired with active repair.

Worked Case: Over-Age Learners Face a Dead End

A sixteen-year-old has completed only Grade 6 after late entry and two repetitions.

Keeping the learner in ordinary age-grade progression would require several more years beside much younger students. The system offers an accelerated lower-secondary pathway combining foundational repair, compressed curriculum and vocational exploration.

The goal is not to erase missing learning. It is to make completion realistically reachable.

Worked Case: Promotion Data Is Wrong

A student is marked as having failed mathematics because one assessment score did not import into the school system.

Before final progression decisions, an exception report identifies the missing record. The source assessment is verified, the data is corrected and the learner is promoted.

High-stakes decisions need data-quality controls as well as academic rules.

Failure Mode: Repetition Is the First Intervention

The repair is early detection and tiered support months before the final progression decision.

Failure Mode: Automatic Promotion Means No Support

The repair is promotion plus structured remediation, tutoring, screening and next-grade monitoring.

Failure Mode: A Whole Grade Is Repeated for One Weak Subject

The repair is course-level recovery, targeted support or conditional promotion where the system structure permits it.

Failure Mode: The Repeat Year Looks Exactly Like the First One

The repair is an individual instructional plan specifying what changes in teaching, support and progress monitoring.

Failure Mode: Families Learn About Repetition at the End of the Year

The repair is early notice, documented support reviews and transparent criteria.

Failure Mode: Teacher Judgment Varies Wildly Across Schools

The repair is common criteria, moderation and review of school-level outliers.

Failure Mode: One Test Owns the Decision

The repair is multiple evidence sources, measurement-error awareness and review for borderline cases.

Failure Mode: Over-Age Learners Are Left in the Ordinary Pipeline Indefinitely

The repair is accelerated, flexible or second-chance pathways that remain rigorous but are age-appropriate.

Failure Mode: Low Repetition Is Celebrated Without Checking Learning

The repair is joint monitoring of repetition, proficiency, later-grade performance, dropout and completion.

Failure Mode: High Repetition Is Blamed Entirely on Students

The repair is system diagnosis across curriculum, language, attendance, teachers, assessment and school resources.

Failure Mode: Progression Metrics Create Gaming

The repair is accountability that rewards learning and successful support rather than raw promotion or pass rates alone.

What a Strong Grade-Progression System Should Be Able to Answer

• What does promotion mean at each level?
• Which competencies are genuine prerequisites?
• What evidence is used?
• How much weight does each assessment carry?
• How are measurement errors near cut points handled?
• Does attendance affect progression?
• How are documented absences treated?
• Does behaviour affect academic promotion, and why?
• Who makes the decision?
• How are teacher judgments moderated?
• When are families first notified that progression is at risk?
• What interventions must happen before repetition is considered?
• Is summer learning available?
• Can a learner recover one course instead of repeating a whole grade?
• Is conditional promotion available?
• What support attaches to conditional promotion?
• When is repetition legally permitted?
• How many times may a learner repeat?
• What will be different during a repeat year?
• How is the learner’s social and emotional experience protected?
• What appeal or review rights exist?
• Can the learner participate in the decision?
• How are data errors corrected before the decision?
• How is disability accommodation reflected?
• How are multilingual learners assessed fairly?
• How are late entry and repetition distinguished?
• How many learners are over-age?
• At what point is acceleration preferable to ordinary progression?
• What happens at primary-to-secondary transitions?
• Are examinations creating bottlenecks?
• Can credits or modules make progression more precise?
• What is the fiscal cost of repetition?
• What capacity effects occur when repetition rises?
• Are some schools or groups repeating learners disproportionately?
• What do repeaters achieve in the following year?
• What is their later dropout rate?
• Does low repetition coexist with weak learning?
• Does automatic promotion have a strong support system?
• When policy changes, are cohorts followed for several years?
• Does the system move learners forward because they are ready—or merely because the calendar moved?

A Practical Progression Control Loop

Define grade expectations → monitor learning early → identify risk → intervene → review progress → validate end-of-year evidence → apply promotion rules → consider targeted alternatives to repetition → consult learner and family → decide → attach support plan → record and communicate decision → correct data if disputed → monitor next-grade performance → analyse repetition and over-age patterns → repair upstream causes.

How This Node Connects to the Wider Education System

Grade progression is the traffic system of schooling. It determines how learners move through a curriculum built in annual layers. A good traffic system does not keep weak learners parked indefinitely, and it does not wave them through every junction while ignoring whether they can navigate the next road.

Useful neighbouring routes include the main How Education Works hub; Tiered Academic Intervention & Progress Monitoring; Learning Recovery & Acceleration; Dropout Early Warning, Student Re-Engagement & Return-to-Learning; Flexible Learning Pathways & Second-Chance Education; Assessment; and EMIS Data Quality, Validation & Administrative Data Assurance.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is grade repetition always bad?

No individual decision can be judged from the label alone. However, international evidence raises substantial concerns about routine repetition, especially below upper-secondary level. Where repetition is used, the system should be able to explain why it is preferable to progression with targeted support and what will be different in the repeat year.

Is automatic promotion better?

Automatic promotion can reduce the harms of repetition and age distortion, but it works poorly if learners move forward without remediation. Promotion policy and support policy have to be designed together.

Why does being over-age matter?

Over-age learners may experience social mismatch, delayed completion, greater pressure to work and increased dropout risk. Over-age status can result from late school entry, repetition or both, so the underlying cause matters.

Should one failed subject make a learner repeat the year?

That depends on the system structure and whether the subject is a prerequisite for the next stage. Course recovery, summer learning or conditional promotion can sometimes address a narrow weakness more precisely than full-grade repetition.

What is the most important safeguard?

Intervene before the final decision. If support begins only when repetition is being considered, the progression system is being asked to repair a failure of earlier detection and instruction.

Sources and Further Reading

• OECD — Education at a Glance 2025: How Do Different Education Systems Shape Student Pathways in Primary and Lower Secondary Education?, current comparative evidence on repetition, over-age students and progression policy.
• UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report 2026 — Access and Equity, current monitoring of completion, repetition, late entry and student-flow policy.
• UNESCO GEM Report 2026 — Access and Equity, including analysis of repetition, automatic promotion, remedial support and timely completion.
• UNESCO Institute for Statistics — Repetition Rate by Grade, indicator definition, interpretation, data requirements and quality cautions.

Final Thought: Moving Forward Should Mean More Than Changing the Number on the Classroom Door

School systems are organised around movement.

Grade 1 becomes Grade 2. Primary becomes secondary. Courses accumulate. Years pass.

The administrative system can move a learner forward even when learning has stalled. It can also hold a learner in place even when another form of support would have been better.

Good progression policy is therefore not automatic promotion and it is not automatic repetition.

It is a disciplined decision system that notices difficulty early, provides support before the gate, uses valid evidence, recognises the costs of delay, creates alternatives where possible and follows the learner after the decision to see whether it worked.

The goal is not simply to move students through grades. It is to keep the curriculum and the learner close enough together that movement continues to represent education.