Is age fraud really prevalent in schools?!

[sallowmarshmallow]

My dd attends a private school. I've noticed some of the girls there are very eye developed and yet come from a country where the girls generally develop more slowly than the western dc. I am not from a western country so this is not against any person or race it's just this particular race that happens to be more obvious that genuine dc of this age are much smaller than western dc but these girls are fully developed and acting and looking much much older than the year they attend school in.

I spoke to my friend who is from the same country as these girls and she said it's quite common for parents to send their dc to foreign/international schools and lie about the dc age (within a few years)
I was quite shocked tbh and wondered how prevalent this is. Particularly curious now as I see them succeed in sports teams and academically take all the top spots and this is all very well now, but obviously when it comes to official exams, surely they will also skew overall results that dc the 'correct' age will then be competing with.
Is my friend right?!

So far as education in UK is concerned, what possible "exam" benefit do you envisage?

There is no fixed age for UK examinations or entry to university.

I took and passed several A levels in my late 20's, a decade after I graduated from university.

I had a classmate who started off the same size as the rest of us for school years 7-9, and then at age 15 shot up to over 6ft and grew a full bushy beard, it was incredible (and hot as hell 😬) he went from looking age 14 to looking age 27 in what felt like a few weeks.

He had Viking ancestry…

DS is 14 and in Y9. His beard started at the end of Y8.
He looks like bloody wolverine if he doesn’t keep on top of his sideburns. He has looked around 16 since age 12/13
We are white

There are no safety concerns when this happens? Early 20's with 11 to 16 year olds?

DD is 14 and has a very womanly body, boobs and hips and is taller than me now.
Her firend who is 1 day older and we have known since they were little, is a good half a foot shorter, skinny and no obvious womanly attributes. To look at them you would place them a couple of years apart
I can imagine that as when I attend Year 11 prom it's not uncommon for some female staff in their 20s to look younger than some of the year 11s.

Back to the OP though, it's not uncommon to be educated out of standard UK school years when moving between different systems.

My friend who is from the country says people from this country definitely do this and undoubtedly it's happening at our school. It is a boarding school.

The visas can be faked within the country so that's not necessarily relevant. I actually do believe it to be true. As for exams etc, when my dd applies for university she will be compared to 1000's of applicants who are viewed to have say gcse at a certain age and a levels too. An 18 yo sitting a gcse has an advantage over a 16 yo imo. They've had many years of being more mature to enhance their learning abilities.

But in our case the worst bit is the sports teams. It's almost impossible to go up against the older dc when ranked within age groups.

No, passports and birth certs had to be provided in our school!

This happens sometimes with asylum seekers who have no documentation and claim to be children when they are actually young adults, or not so young in some cases🙄

You're telling me social services are placing adult asylum seekers in private schools? Wow.

In the school my DCs used to go to there were loads of kids outside the normal age for their year group. I think the school encouraged it (extra year's worth of fees when the kids repeat a year).

In my opinion as a summer kid, age really does play a role in the puberty years 10-16 most obviously physical and coordination wise so it will mostly and heavily impact sports and musical performance, especially and unfortunately exactly in the ages of secondary school selection 10-13yo. But I am also pretty sure that by A-levels the difference is negligible in terms of academics, and barely noticeable in sports and music as by that age you are so used to the higher bar, that it seems the same!

Where it really shows is maturity and social behaviour. DS is now 12 year old, and I cannot compare him to his 11 year old self. Night and day!😂