Are your summer born children under achievers or high flyers?

[whoknowswho]

An article in the telegraph suggests August born children struggle at school by the age of seven and are more likely to take vocational quals than go to a top uni . My very late august born DD is thriving at school (Y2) top of the class and loving it but she's still very young so this could all change I guess. What are your summer born children like?www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8860219/Summer-born-children-less-likely-to-attend-top-universities.html#

My dd is in Year 3 but is a summer born. It made a massive difference when she was in Reception and Year 1. Even in Year 2, the "goupings" in the class broadly reflected when the kids had their birthdays throughout the year. Obviously there were some exceptions, but older children tended to be in top groups and younger kids in lower groups. I find that as my dd has moved up the school, the teachers are much less aware of how old she is compared to other kids in her class.

I haven't got a summer baby but my ds has a friend who is August born and he's always in the top groups - probably the brightest child in the class - if not the year.

I don't understand why research such as this is used to support the idea that July and August babies should be allowed to enter Reception a year later than 'normal' i.e. Once they have turned 5 as it will simply mean the younger children in the class (the May and June birthdays) then become the subject of this disadvantage. It is nothing to do with August birthday per se, just youngest in year.

Fwiw, my DD is the youngest in her year and appears to have Bo academic disadvantage at the mo (she's only in Reception though :) ) although physically she looks tiny next to some of her classmates.

I have summer born twins who would be in the year below if they had been born to term.
They were slow in many of their milestones and certainly when they went to school, being 4 merely days beforehand, they did not seem ready. They could not read, write, to be honest they could do very little. Physiaclly they were tiny and uncoordinated.

I was very fortunate in that the teachers accepted that this would have an impact. I also reminded anyone who failed to do so. I plugged and plugged away at it.

Fast forward to year eight and DD is in all the top sets at her secondary school (except maths!!!) and DS has just passed an academic scholarship to one of the most selective schools in the country.
They both play sport at county level and DD has been chosen several times to play at national level.

They are however, both still very wee and young for their age in many many ways.

I'm a february birthday, and was brought up in Scotland, so one of the youngest in my year. Of the feb birthdays in my year, I think there were 6 or 7 of us, and 2 of us have PhDs. One feb birthday a couple of years ahead of me at school has gone on to be an MP though, so she is clearly not disadvantaged at all! My sister is also a feb birthday though, and she and another feb birthday friend of hers were at a definite disadvantage due to their age.

HOWEVER, I am sure I would have done better at school had I been in the year below. I was a straight B student all the way, and with an extra year of maturity, am fairly sure I could have been a straight A student. Natural aptitude for academia was, for me, hindered by being very very childish and much younger emotionally than my peers. I only caught up really in my final year at Uni, after I'd taken a year of work experience, so was the same age as everyone else. It made a noticable difference to my attitude, for some reason.

I am very glad that DS is a september birthday (in england) because of this.

I think individual summer born children can do very well but life is a bit easier with an extra bit of maturity. Both my DD's are summer born and are doing well at university but for DD1 being one of the youngest and young for her age all the way through did make life difficult at times especially in the GCSE years. DD2 was one of her school's highest achievers at GCSE but the other 5 jumping for joy in the local paper were all born before Christmas.

I think that the cutoff for the school year should be in the spring and then we wouldn't be sending children who were only just 4 to school.

My brother is an early august baby - he struggled more than me academically (I am late Sept birthday). But he is arguably much more successful than me in the career stakes - certainly earns a lot more and has a much more responsible and demanding job.

I think as ever the individual experience does not necessarily match the average statistics.

DD1 is a July child, she is in Year 5 now and has been top set all the way through. Academically she is very able but socially you can see a difference in her compared to the rest of her class.

This thread wouldn't really be representative of the statistics though, understandably you won't find people piling in to post that their summer borns are under achievers. I don't find the statistics particularly interesting, as someone else said, they mean nothing on an individual level.

my eldest 2 are summer born, one end of aug, the other july, they are doing well academically, always way above average etc BUT they didnt start school until they were 9yrs and 6yrs old as we home schooled before then, they werent ready at 4yrs old and i think they would have struggled had they started then :)

Dh's sister went to school (full school, reception equivalent) at THREE. I kid you not. She finished A levels at 16. She is a GP now, earns mega bucks. Very high academic achiever but struggled socially I think. Dh also went to school early (3;9) as the local primary was about to lose a teacher so they rounded up all the young uns. He fared averagely academically but was a social star.

Greythorne I was listening to a discussion on radio 4 about this, and the woman presenting the research said that in fact the evidence supports the complete opposite. Summer born children do better when they start school early, rather than later, because they needed that extra term or terms of school in order to help them keep up with the older children.

I'm summer born. Not convinced it made a difference academically. But I do think it made a big difference in terms of sport - I always thought I was rubbish at sport, but now I realise that's probably just because I was smaller and younger at the start so got used to being towards the bottom.

Of course there are August-born children who do very well, but ceteris parabus the September child must be at an advantage simply due to the extra year he/she's been alive.

In my experience, although ds has never struggled academically (top SATS marks in county, natch) he is, now he is 13, struggling a bit with the rampaging puberty of some of his peers. He just doesn't get why anyone would want to walk home with girls or spray on gallons of Lynx. (The time will come!)

I think other factors come into play. Most of the people on here with summer birthdays who got their 10 A's are (I'm guessing) women. In my experience it's the summer born boys and particularly (very unscientific research but...) the first born.

Of course, there are lots of variables but my eldest - a DS born in July - is 9 weeks older than his best childhood family friend. They started play school on the same day in September when they were both 3 (mine was 3 and 2 months, the other boy was 3 and a week). My son left the following year to go to school. He went part time for 2 terms until Easter. The other boy started full time. He will also leave school a year earlier than his friend. Research at the Institute of Education a few years ago showed that the effects of good quality preschool education could be seen for years afterwards. It could be argued therefore that the difference between the boys educationally is at the very least a year and 1 term (the 2 part time 1/2 terms), nearing 2 years and this is despite there only being 9 weeks between them.

Another example...We used to be in a small group of parents who met to play football with their children. Out of the 10 who regularly went 5 of the boys were 'naughty' - fidgety, didn't listen, follow instructions, etc. All 5 struggled through (different) infant schools. All of those 5 boys were eldest summer born boys.

Yes, my son is struggling and underachieving and yes, I am saddened by it.

Yes, there was talk of parents with children born June, July, August, September, October being offered when their children could start school. That seems to have disappeared along with most sensible government policies (moan, moan).

One of my other DC has just started school and her class has a rest every day. If they need a sleep they are clearly too young to be there! Fortunately, she is enjoying it, has a fab teacher, etc. but this idea that these little four year olds are there all day does make me cross.

My dd is July born. She wasn't ready to start school at 4, and has always struggled. Now in Yr 4, she's beginning to do better, but has a lot of catching up to do.

My dd-i-l was born 31/08 and got a first class honours degree from York.
Dd was born in August and got a 2:1 from Sheffield.
Dss was born late July and got a 2:1 in Engineering from Leeds.
Our other dc born in Spring and Winter did slightly less well though all have decent degrees and careers.
I think that if the child is academic he/she will achieve whenever the birthday.dd was reading fluently before she was 3 and started school 3 weeks after her 4th birthday.

My dd's birthday is 30th August (born two weeks early) and, because I also have an August-born ds, I have done more than my share of hand-wringing on this subject.

As I said up thread, ds's only problem has been maturity, really. Dd, however, was absolutely not ready for school at 4 and 3 days. Because the local school is very sought-after, I couldn't just delay her start or there would be no place, so I just sent her mornings only for a full year. I was hounded a bit by the Head, but (unusually for meek and mild me!) I stuck it out because I knew dd was too little to cope.

There is a girl in the year below dd, who is is 3 days younger than dd. She is always being lauded as brilliant and such a high achiever, because she is being compared with her year group, not her age group. Dd has achieved exactly the same, but because she is in the year above, anything she does is not seen as any great shakes. (Sorry, that was a pathetic mummy grumble.)

Yes, it does matter what the cut off date is. Of course many August babies do just fine (I have:)) but the point is overall, they are disadvantaged in many ways, from being less emotionally mature, to being judged on SATS where they may have had almost a year less preparation than their peers.

The effect in the sports arena is covered in the Outliers book by Malcolm Gladwell. And it is also pronounced in other areas such as astronauts, exam results etc. The summer-born effect is well-known in education. It matters because people look at autumn born children and think they are cleverer, stronger, better at sports, more numerate or whatever, they get put in the top set, or picked for the team, and more time and energy is invested in them, so a circular effect is created whereby they really do become better over time.

It's also discouraging for parents of summer-borns when their children are compared with autumn-borns. I was chatting with a mum the other day whose child is not really reading much, only letters, she's just five, but her mum is comparing her to other children who are just six in the same class, who, nine months ago, may well not have been reading.

There is also something you can do about it: be aware of it so it doesn't factor in your decisions of who need help/who is very able; give more time and attention to the summer-borns when they arrive in school (which is just compensation for the time they didn't receive which the other children did) and so on.

Gramercy that's exactly the kind of discouragement I was talking about.

I think it's a mistake to look at the issue in terms of how well a child is doing compared to the rest of the class. The real measure should be how well a child might have done if they'd had those extra months that some of their classmates will have had.

Ds has a summer birthday. He's doing well but it's always seemed a little unfair that at the end of each school year he is the same age that some of his friends were at the beginning of that same school year.

I am a summer born (August) and so is DS1 (end of July). So far it hasn't done any harm to DS1 and he is in Yr 7.

I didn't struggle at school and did well until I did my A levels and then I had to do resits. Partly with hind sight, I can see I wasn't ready for them (big issues with essay writing style apparently that resolved itself a year later with a bit more maturity) and I wasn't ready to go to university either. I was champing at the bit and got great grades a year later. I was still only 4 weeks older than my best friend at university too even though she was a whole academic year behind me, having not crashed and burned in her A levels like me.

I have 2 degrees and a masters now. I just needed a year to catch up I think. I shall keep an eye on DS1 obviously but if he needs an extra year at some point then it is no big deal. Now, even more than 25 years ago when I was doing my A levels, you can step back or restart your education so easily that although it feels like a blow at the time it really isn't a big deal in the long run.

Oh and I have one at the other end of the scale - a September born DS2 who is very bright and top of the class for everything. I have to remind myself that he is apparently reaching academic milestones earlier in the school year than DS1 but then he is almost a year older than DS1 was when he did them. In reality I reckon, but for DS1 SEN, they would be about the same but it looks like DS2 shines and DS1 didn't.

In Reception the teachers are full of talk about awareness of who is born when, making allowances, etc etc.

But... fast forward even to Year One, and no-one knows, no-one cares. So your child born on August 31st, who has just turned five, is being treated exactly the same as the one born on September 1st who is already 6.

My eldest is 19 and August born and I feel he has been disadvantaged from being the youngest/least socially mature in his year. Doesn't stop him from being accademically successful but I think he would have been more confident if he had spent his school years with a higher place in the pecking order. My other two (end May and March) have been noticeably more confident. The cut off has to be somewhere, but ds was happier one year when split year groups meant he was one of the older ones. The next year though he was back to being the youngest and split from the friends he had made...

I agree with ColdToast.

DS Yr 6 is doing well, is predicted to get SATS level 5s and is in the 'enrichment' sets. But I suspect he would be seeming to do even better if he was in the year below, or had started and continued his formal education 6 months later. To my great surprise he was slow to start reading compared to some classmates, but then developed a reading age way in advance of his years. I think he would have more confidence from being able to be really good at things, and feel in control. He gets tired compared to older classmates, still, at 10.