do you think summer born children are really disadvantaged??

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just thinking wholly from the point of view of my ds (selfish i know). He is May born, i only work part time 3 days a week so my mum provided childcare as she is retired. When he was 2 i sent him a local playschool a couple of mornings a week but he couldn't go to the preschool attached to the school he will be going to until he got his funding term after he was 3, then he went there for the three terms. Anyway best decision i ever made to send him there, amazing preschool but if he had been born in autumn term he would have got 5 terms at his preschool instead of only 3.

DS didn't get on too well at his first playschool (won't go into details) but loved his 2nd preschool and has come on in leaps and bounds, i just wish he'd been allowed to stay for extra two terms so he'd got 5 terms same as autumn born children, school there is going to be so many more children

Who regards it as strange Rabbit?

The Daily Mail overtook the Sun which in the last figures was fourth in readership tables

Sorry wrong thread

The teachers and some of the more...invested...parents. especially in KS1. It started off slightly amusing but became annoying quite quickly.

I was in this situation as a child. Academically I was always one of the top. In sports I always struggled as I was always the shortest in my class.

There will be a few more years until all the children who have done three terms in reception go through GCSEs and we can see if that initiative makes a difference in academic results for summer borns. Those children aren't even in yr6 yet iirc.

My last comment wasn't very clear. I was referring to the change that meant all children, regardless of birth date, were entitled to 3 terms in reception.

It is documented that on average they seem to do worse. However that isn't true on each individual case.

I do sometimes wonder about something to do with time of year irrespective on the school years. When I was at Oxford, there were a slightly larger number of September/October birthdays among my friends. However, a good number of them-approaching half, were one or two years ahead, so surely they would have counted as young birthdays.

For mine: Dd1 winter born, started about right timing.
Dd2, also winterborn, could have done with starting at least 2 terms earlier, I often think she would have been happier in the year above.
Ds, summer born, could have done with starting about summer term in year 1, or even start of year 2.

They're all equally bright, I think. Just their emotional maturity.

I think academically they will do similarly-dd1 I suspect will do slightly better all round because she's a natural worker, but dd2 and ds will do much better in what they are interested in, and not bother with the ones they aren't.

Many years ago when I started school there were three intakes a year, depending on when your birthday was. If you were born Sept/Oct/Nov/Dec you started in September. If you were born Jan/Feb/March/April you started after Christmas and if you were born May/June/July/August you started after Easter. I was July born so started school 7 months after some of my peers who were in the same school year as me.

So you started the term before you turned five. Emotional and socially it was probably better as it meant the really young ones hadn't just tuned four before they started school. But then you were seven months behind education wise.

I didn't do very well at school. That was more because I'm not very bright and took a while to 'grow up' I was just 14 when my GCSE course work started and I was too young. When I resat my exams, some in the sixth form and some at college I did far better because I was that bit more mature.

My eldest 3 DC started school under that system. Rising fives I think they called it. Also awful for summer borns. My DS2 sat his KS1 test as a 6 year old (at school less than 2 years) alongside his classmates who had had 2 full terms longer at school. The same DS started secondary school on his 11th birthday.

I know what ever system is used someone is going to be the youngest.

DD goes to a selective school, that adjusts for age when completing assessments. Nevertheless the age results are quite interesting, especially in relation to MsBug's comment that she didn't consider May children summer born.

If completed as per Kasterborous it shows:

Sept - Dec 43%
Jan - Apr 19%
May - Aug 38%

So it looks like a high percentage are summer born. However change the months thus:

Sept - Nov 31%
Dec - Feb 25%
Mar - May 25%
Jun - Aug 19%

Quite a different picture is revealed.

Two children have left due to struggling to keep up with the required standard, one a late summer born, but the other an autumn born child.

There is a noticeable difference between the oldest half of the class and the youngest, with respect to confidence and maturity.

I'm a summer born baby and have a phd. my 2 closest university friends were also summer babies and they both got phd's too.

My dd is a summer baby and I'm not worried academically. She might get a bit more tired and stroppy as she's a bit younger but academic development is in my very humble opinion due to genes, luck, and teaching and encouragement from both parents and teachers, not the month in which you were born.

In response to my earlier post my friend claimed that when applying for selective school summer born babies with similar grades to September born babies were given the places because it was felt they had more potential.

no I don't think they are. If anything my April born child is far less disadvantaged than my September born. Both are very bright (sorry but they are) and the elder one even though she has some splds would probably have been better off as the youngest in the year above to be honest.

Marnierose I have heard the same about allowances being made for summer born children but my view is that they have had the same amount of time of formal education as autumn borns.

regarding whether may is summer born or not, i suppose technically its not in the summer but i meant this from the point of view that any child with birthday April to August only gets three terms in preschool, instead of 4 or 5 which older children get.

But they start reception earlier instead.

DS is 31st Aug birthday (born 2 weeks early) & is going into yr5 and doing very well academically however I would say he didn't start to shine at school till half way through year 1 (reception he really struggled).

I don't really think an extra term or two (or even year) of preschool gives an advantage unless there are problems in the home environment.

One year of preschool is great for getting them used to school routines, being in a big group etc. But one year is plenty for that. They don't do a lot of academic learning there, probably less than you'd do at home if the child was interested.

Have a late summer born DS - birthday end next week.

It can make a difference, depends on the child. Academically my son had no problems and has always worker above age expectation but emotionally he was immature compared to his autumn born peers. Natural as he's been on the planet for less time.

There is obviously evidence to suggest that summer born children can be disadvantaged, hence schools keeping detailed stats on their attainment, but don't make it a self fulfilling prophecy.

I don't think number of terms in pre school/nursery has as much impact as number of terms in reception for summer born children.
My summer born son had five terms in nursery school but only one term in reception.

For me personally it did have an impact. mainly because DS being summer born immediately made friends with a child whose 5th birthday was about two days after they started in YR. There was a big difference in their ability-and the friend's Mum loved to point it out.

It can work the other way in my last class the eldest child was much less able than his younger friend whose mother continually rubbed in the fact her son was a whole year younger.

I just thought that the friend should be more able as he had spent one more year at pre-school than DS and it would be weird if he wasn't. So I told the Mum that.

but out of curiosity what do people think these children LEARN at pre-school? will we start saying that the children who are entitled to nursery funding etc from the age of 2 are getting more time in a pre-school environment so therefore are advantaged (when I thought the whole point was that they were from disadvantaged households)

DD1 has been on the receiving end of 'you should win sports day/be a good reader/get your spellings right/be able to sing dance and drive a car blah blah blah' from other children and their parents because she is a september birthday. thank goodness she is bright as otherwise it would have done serious damage to her confidence. as it is she gets very upset when she gets things wrong because 'everyone says I should be getting it all right because I am the oldest'.

Pre-schools in many cases teach next to nothing, the ones I know work on a yearly cycle of what they teach so the ones who go for 3 terms get the same teaching, they do it once, the ones who have been there longer get to sit through it twice (if they are included in it the first time, some of the larger ones put them in a group that doesn't take part in that stuff when they first join during the year).

I do think a lot of it is people's expectations. you will find that generally the parents saying 'oh but he is just a baby' of their summer term birthday child are the ones who have a child struggling to keep up in R/Yr1 and I PERSONALLY think that is probably largely to do with their expectations. If my children could put tights on at 3 then there is no AGE related reason by a boy can't put a pair of shorts on himself at the age of nearly 5. just my opinion of course but if parents believe their child is just a young one and so of course will struggle then chances are they will, believe your children are capable of tackling anything if given the opportunity and chances are they will do that instead.

I can only speak for myself and DS (and this was 11 years ago now) but he was in a class of 15 and it was quite obvious that the Autumn born children were more confident, could mostly write their full names etc, and seemed more at ease with it all than DS and the other younger children.

I had no idea what to expect with him being PFB, and didn't really have expectations as such.

It all evens out as they go up the school, it was only really in YR/Y1 I gave it much thought.