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!

[kipperandtiger]

I did wonder about the business of being last to drink and last to be able to have driving lessons bit, and I suppose I'll just have to teach by example that it's quite ok to go to the pub to celebrate with non alcoholic drinks - it's the company and atmosphere, and not the drunkenness that matters. And at least he won't feel obliged to become the designated chauffeur for his buddies, like some of my college friends were (also didn't help that their parents obligingly provided them with a vehicle!).

[kipperandtiger]

GooseyLoosey - 7 is still so young (IMHO) for a school pupil. I would urge you to encourage her and instill her the belief that she can succeed, she can top the class, and achieve anything if she worked hard at it. Do this collectively as a family - parents and other older relatives, and always urge her to keep improving. Regardless of what the school says. A friend and his brother went to a local primary and then local comprehensive in an area that was so deprived, the school had low expectations of everyone. Their mum and dad were the ones who encouraged them to perform well in whatever they did and both went to Oxbridge colleges to do medicine and law respectively, having always outperformed their teachers' expectations.

I did a calculation as I too have a summer born DC - at 5 everyone else is 6 or will be 6 soon; that's 20% older, which seems like a 15 year old going to school with 18 year olds. But by the time they reach 12, the gap will have closed to less than 10% older (ie a 15 year old studying with 15+ and 16 year olds), and the differences will seem negligible. It is possible to be constantly catching up, catching up, and then one day, the younger pupil appears to have raced ahead of his/her peers. I'd focus on the actual learning and personal attainments rather than where they are in the class (eg being a B student in a class of "C" achievers is worse than being an "A-" achiever in a class of "A+" achievers.) But I definitely would check that the school they went to didn't have a school bar based on age!! (waste of the fees, lol).

[QZ]

if you want to know the factors, why don't you just read some of the research? a lot has been done in this field... and it would be nice to know why you're asking.

FWIW I used to analyse attainment data to look at factors involved.

At KS1 biggest indicator was MoB (I.e. age) followed by FSM, and gender.

Working with smaller samples, the biggest indicator in general is the educational level of the mother. Unfortunately we can't get that info most of the time, so it was a one-off study of 2500 children. Usually I was looking at 15000 children.