date of birth and education

[ja06le07]

Hi, i was just wondering if any one would share their opinion on this bit of information? Do you have two or more children, are you in agreement?

Children born in the summer achieve lower grades than those born in the autumn.

Thank you!

I got higher grades than my summer born sister, but she is just not academic. I don't think birthdays come into it.

Any more than you can use my exceedingly clever summer born DH and his equally intelligent spring born sister to tell you anything. They simply grabbed the best possible mix of their scholarship parents genes.

My DDs are equally bright in very different ways and born slap bang in the middle of the school year, so no help at all.

I have 2 friends from school who are best friends. Friend 1 was born at the end of August and friend 2 was born at the start of Sept. There's only 3 days between their birthdays.

Friend 1 graduated from Oxford last year. Friend 2 is considering going back to college to try and get her English and Mathis GCSEs.

I'm expecting in June and I'm amazed at the amount of random people that have been all nice about the pregnancy and then tell me my child will be thick because of her summer birthday.

August babies are 5% less likely to get 5 good GCSEs than September babies.

ie. 60% of sep girls pass compared to 55% of aug girls.

And presumably if you compare sep-dec babies to may-aug babies the difference is even less.

So it really doesn't seem too bad to me.

Every other factor has more importance.

Isn't maternal education one of the biggest factors?

Maternal income (and household income) have a far bigger effect.

If the mum was educated till 25 there is a 90% chance their son will get 5 GCSEs. Wheras if the mum was only educated till 15 there is only a 40% chance their son will get 5 GCSEs.

So rather than worrying about birthdate, you should worry about how much education you got.

(according to this report)

I don't know what parents & prospective parents are supposed to do with this info, anyway. If your kid is already born, you can't change their birthday.

Nearly half of pregnancies are unplanned, so oops, you get the birthday month they're given. Of the 60% or so planned, most people would not say "Well it's April already so I'll stop TTC for 8 months until I can be sure baby's birthday will be in the right target zone." Because you just want to get on with TTC, not stop-start every year within a narrow pressurised time window.

Then there's babies born prematurely: you've aimed for an October birthday but the baby comes 6 weeks early in August. Planning gone out the window.

You could have a super-flexible system for starting school age, but only more educated parents would take advantage of it. And then arguably you'd need the ability to move grades or be held back to be made part of the system.

You could have a "test" of school readiness for when to start, but parents would want the final vote to override it anyway, and how would kids with learning disabilities fit in?

You could have an age-adjusted results system, where the results are adjusted by age: but this would be cumbersome to admin to say the least, and would seem silly when they get to age 15-16. There would be no end of arguments about a fair way to enhance results for the youngest pupils at this point.

On the negative side: the eldest get gappy smiles, spots, periods & dental braces first.

ps: I do think a leetle bit of flexibility in starting date would be desirable, especially where premature birth or SN are involved, but the criteria to apply would be so controversial, it'd be opening a can of worms.

And then arguably you'd need the ability to move grades or be held back to be made part of the system

and evidence suggest this increases future failure

www.oecd.org/dataoecd/51/50/45179151.pdf

^Does repeating years help students to catch up? Unsurprisingly, those
who repeat years tend to do badly at school. For example, they have much
worse PISA results at age 15. In France, Paul and Troncin (2004) report that half of the pupils who repeat their first year at primary school go on to leave school
with either no qualification or just a lower secondary qualification. Studies in
Québec, Canada and the United States showed that those repeating years are
much more likely to drop out of school later on. But these poor outcomes may
reflect the fact that failing students are selected for repetition. How would
they have performed had they been treated differently?^

I don't actually know if this is true, and I really can't be bothered to google it, but according to DH, English premiership footballers are much more likely to be born in the autumn than in the summer.

DD2 is now 4.7. She started school at 4 years and 2 weeks of age. Pretty much the youngest you can start school.

She went to school unable to write or read, although she recognised a few of the sounds.

She is now on stage 3 books (yellow/blue band). Her school say that stage 3 is expected by the end of the first year for an 'average' reception child. She has another term yet in reception, so I'm sure she will be on stage 4 or 5 by the end of the year.

She can write simple words correctly, and has a good go at longer words.

She has good mathematical foundations now. Very inquisitive and relates her learning at school to every day situations (ie. topic is 'growing', and she said 'my legs are growing like tree legs grow).

My eldest DD is 6.3, December born, has SN and goes to Special school.

Ragged, in Scotland Jan and sometimes Dec babies can be held back to the following year (cut off date Feb) so children are 4.5 to 5.5 when they start school.

Factors other than month of birth play a key role in academic success. DD is in year one and her birthday is end of March. I read with all the students in the class and there seems to be little correlation between academic achievement and birthday. One of the brightest girls in the class - articulate, mature, well above average in reading and maths - is the youngest as she will not be 6 until Ocober of this year.

What happens at home is significant. My birthday is end of August and my brother's is beginning of October. We have similar qualifications because of our parents' attitude to education and learning - very little to do with birthdays.

I agree Shanghaidiva. So if you HAD to rank OTHER FACTORS which impact negatively on attainment, which factor would you put first?? Income, family background (working/middle class) parents education, Childs School, family setup....

My DS (yr2) was born on 31st Aug at 11.37pm and 2 weeks early

He struggled in reception and things did not seem to "click" until Easter of reception.

He is now in yr2 and in top sets for everything and doing really well but it does make me wonder how much stronger he would have been if he was in yr1 now instead of yr2.

JA - I haven't researched it - but I bet the biggest influence on how well your child does is parental expectation. (Have you read tiger mother?)

It's not to do with being summer born or winter born, but to do with being older in the cohort. So in England it would be advantagous to be born on 1st Sept or shortly after. In Scotland it would be advantageous to be born on 1st March or shortly after.

DD is January, top of class all through school and went to a top Uni.

DS is mid August and doing extremely well at a super selective grammar (DD went to comprehensive).

I had same expectations for both which they have both surpassed (DH & I did not go to Uni). DD said the other week she was glad I had not been a pushy mum as she sees lots of those touring her college.

Summer born children are younger when they atart school so are expected to be behind their classmates for the first year or two. This is a statistical generalisation, not relevant to all individuals. However the % difference in age decreases rapidly as children move up the school and by juniour school is no longer relevant or significant.

I found amongst friends that quite a lot of girls who were born at the end of the school year were actually BETTER at achieving good grades (possibly due to not shining at sports and wanting to shine at something else), but the ones born earlier in the year had more confidence while at school. Among boys, the ones who were born at the start of the school year did better in sport, but no discernible advantage regarding grades. Of course, this is a very random poll with only a small number of people. As long as one is not having one's heart set on seeing one's son become a Premiership footballer and reading about them in the tabloids in all sorts of dramas.......

Statistics and individual outcome are not the same thing.

I started school a year earlier than some of my friends because I was December born and the school authorities counted the calendar year as the criterion for when you went to school. I had far better results throughout my school years than my older brother who was born in May and hence among the older in his class. He was big and strong but very clumsy and bad at games, so his confidence wasn't very good at the best of times.

We had the same mother (educated to degree level) and the same family income (modest).

Yes, that's what the statistics say.

Recently, I checked the brith date of the silliest boy in my bottom Y9 group - it was 28 August! Then I checked the top set 3/4 were autumn or winter born! That would proof the statistic right in a small snapshot.

I do think children are pushed too soon into formal education, before they are developmentally ready - and 4 is just too young to start.

Not sure if I am missing something (obviously not possible as I am a winter born ) but presumably there are statistically the same number of intelligent/less intelligent children born all the way through the year. So you are just as likely to be intelligent whether you are born on 31st Aug or the 1st September.
The difference is that when you start school at just having had your 4th birthday you have a years less emotional maturity/confidence etc of a child who is just about to have their 5th birthday. At age 4 that is a 1/4 of your life, by the time you get to GCSEs it is a much smaller percentage, so less significant.
Don't some schools 'alter' SATS scores for KS1 to age adjust them, but don't by the time they are at KS2, presumably as the age differences are starting to even out by then.

My August born daughter suffers as a result of her birthday.

She is 7 and has always been subject to lower expectations because she is younger than many of the class. This has resulted in her believing that she cannot achieve what some of her class mates can and an assumption that she will find things hard without actually trying.

It has also affected her confidence. In some ways, she clearly is much younger than some of the children in her class and she is aware of this and assumes that she is not as good as them.

None of this has anything to do with how clever she is, but I suspect without intervention, she is doomed to underachieve, in part because of her birthday.

Indigobell - Parental expectation is very important - that reminds me of this morning reading with DS!

DS prefers to read with DP and this morning I found out why - DP is happy to read 5 pages of his reading book, helps him along if he gets stuck and tells him how well he has done. Whereas I make him read the whole book (takes 10 min) and encourage him to work out unknown words for himself or re-read if he hasn't understood.

I'm an August baby and we deliberately TTC a spring baby - DD was born in May, we would have actively TTA a July/August baby.

I'm not bothered about exam results etc, but being the youngest in the class was an issue socially. I also come from a family where we tend to hit puberty late - 16/17 - so I was emotionally and physically way behind my peers.

I was also unable to take part in social life in the 6th form - I was at a boarding school and we had a school bar for the over 17's - I wasn't eligible to go till my last year and my boarding house cohort were overwhelmingly autumn and early spring babies, so I was the only one left out. Even celebrating A Levels, I was the only one drinking lemonade (with a special pass from the housemaster).

Academically I was always right up at the top, sportswise I was useless but I don't blame my birthdate on that!

My DD is 31 August. She got A in maths in Yr 9 aged 13 and just got A in physics and A in chemistry in Yr 10 aged 14.

Maybe it helps that her mum has an IQ of 154, has a BSc and a MEd, and her dad has a degree, PhD and MBA.