A new study from the Erasmus School of Economics has found that Dutch grade 8 teachers are influenced by the relative performance of a student's classmates when issuing school track recommendations — even when students have identical test scores. Students who rank among the top of their class are more likely to receive a VWO (pre-university) recommendation, while those at the bottom are more likely to be steered toward VMBO (lower vocational) tracks, regardless of their absolute Cito standardised test results. Researcher Max Coveney, who analysed data from around 460,000 students across more than 5,200 primary schools between 2006 and 2021, says the findings highlight the need for greater teacher awareness and suggests that delaying the critical tracking decision — currently made around age 12 in the Netherlands — could lead to fairer outcomes.