summer-born children

[rubo001]

Children born in August, July or June, are nearly 1 year younger than autumn-born children in their class. There is evidence that they lag behind the older children not only academically, but also in sport, and are more likely to be diagnosed ADHD or to be excluded from school. Any parents of summer-born children who have encountered problems because of this? I believe that the authorities are not dealing with it at all.

My DD was born very end of August and is far from lagging behind

As a governor I've never seen a breakdown comparing the standard/progress of autumn/winter children to spring/summer; it would be interesting! Speaking as the parent of a late August child in yr 6, he's actually been working with the year above him for the last few years (although they've now gone to secondary) and is one of the 'high flyers' in his year. His age has never affected him, academically or socially- up to this point! I do realise that not all August born children have the same experience. All children are different and as some pp have said, someone has to be he youngest. Delaying entry to school is absolutely right for some, but not for others.

Dixie The provisional data for KS1 results this year is available - table 17 of the National Tables shows attainment by month of birth.
www.gov.uk/government/statistics/phonics-screening-check-and-key-stage-1-assessments-england-2017

They show levels of attainment drops on an almost linearly basis month by month in all cases ie parents of children born in October could claim they are being disadvantaged compared to children born in September.

Totally agree that it is right for some children to be deferred (maybe not just summer born) because they are really not ready for school, but not though because they will be the youngest in the year and less likely to have the same level of attainment as the older children in the year.

I worked in a school and dealt with admissions. Some parents deferred their summer borns until the September and so they started school in year 1. I thought that was madness considering that teaching is so different in reception and year 1. In my experience, teachers and leaders are very much aware of the importance of supporting summer borns. Some of these late starters then had to form friendships in an established class. I think i would have preferred to get my child in and used to school.
I can see the issue as my friend has a just turned 4 year old in reception and she worries. However I have no idea what the answer is. There will always be a cohort of younger kids.

I've NC for this.

I have some interesting data I got from Kent County Council. I was deep in discussion with them about the issues I feel there are with the age standardisation for the Kent 11+. There seem to be big issues with children around the borderline. i.e. vast majority who "just" pass aren't summer borns. Seems less of an issue at the top end, but age standardisation in the test is failing summer borns who are borderline.

Clouding the issue is how many actually sit the test. Less summer borns are put in for the test - presumably because they think they won't pass. Is this because they have low self esteem as pp have mentioned, from starting school at a disadvantage?

Nothing is being done as it's too expensive to change the system. Here's the data:

number of pupils assessed suitable for entry to Kent Grammar school broken down by the month of birth within the range
September 2005 to August 2006

Month Assessed suitable for
Kent Grammar schools
September 1355
October 1378
November 1206
December 1263
January 1171
February 1066
March 1173
April 1103
May 1196
June 1198
July 1168
August 1089

landfilly where's the breakdown of number of people in the cohorts though, both in terms of children born in a month (september is 15% above the average) and in terms of children opting to take the test as you say. The differences described there could easily be explained by the number of students, so you need to get hold of both that data too

No idea if you can access year of birth for the whole population easily (LEA would have for state schools, but exclude private schools I think), you also the fact that parents who want a grammar system and will specifically move to kent if they think their kids can get in, which may again be simply the bias to older in cohort, if parents have already decided their summer borns aren't academic.

Olivias I think people are talking abiut deferring the start of Reception not missing it completely. I had that option, as legally my son didn’t need to be in school until his 5th birthday which is late August so that was down to me. I agree it would be much more difficult to hit Year 1 with no experience of the formal learning environment, for any child really let alone a summer born.

Yes annoyingly I had this data but it's gone.

That's the problem I faced again and again - there's so much data required to prove it, and the data is so difficult to obtain, plus there are so many other factors clouding it.

But I know it's a big issue.

The only data I can find from what I had is that 59% of the Kent cohort that were summer born took the test vs 73% autumn born. I think this used 3 months Jun/Jul/Aug vs Sep/Oct/Nov.

So yes it's an issue that less are taking the test.

That data isn't showing a definite needing to help summer borns. The summer borns do as well as the spring borns. May and June in that do better than any other month from January onwards, and November is only 7 over June which isn't really significant-it just looks way more because it goes over 1200.
If you recalculate February as 31 days, it's roughly the same as January and March.

If I was presented with that data I would be looking at whether parents of September/October borns are more inclined to put them in for tutoring earlier to make sure they pass etc. and also the proportions from each month applying that get in. If fewer summer borns apply there may be a higher proportion that get in.

The numbers here could just be the difference in perceptions-he's a summer baby, he won't pass so I no point getting him tutored and I'll play it down so he doesn't want to.

Owl's post raises an interesting idea IMO.

How about we say all children start reception in the September after their fifth birthday. (Because let's face it, reception is geared towards five year olds and Y1 is geared towards 6 year olds. Which is why 5 year olds tend to do well in reception. And 4 year olds not. Statistically.)

Now some children will be nearly 6 in the September after their fifth birthday, and their parents may feel that they are ready sooner. So let's let them choose to start earlier.

Instead of starting everyone early, and debating wether to allow some people to defer; let's start everyone late, and allow some people to start early.

That would get rid of the social inequality problem to a large extent. Most people would stay in their cohort and if someone chose to send their kids earlier, it would not be to 'give them an advantage' (they'd be choosing to take their age advantage away from them) so it would presumably in the vast majority of cases be because they honestly believe their child is ready to start school.

You could get a similar effect by simply saying that reception should be like nursery school, and Y1 should be like reception currently is. And then allowing those parents that think their child would be best educated in a more mature, formal school environment, to 'accelerate'.

The Sep and Aug differential is quite stark.

But if you took a October born and a September born from the following year there would be the same difference. Where ever you cut off there is going to be the same issue.
The only way to truly get rid of the problem is to have 3 year groups per calendar year and each class is only made up kids with a birthday in the same term, this would then have to follow on through out the school and would also mean GCSEs and A levels would have to be held 3 times a year and when you took it would depend on when you were born, of course then kids would be leaving School at different times so uni would also have to have the 3 class per year intake system

Another way to do it is to only progress children up to the following year when they are ready but then you will constantly be splitting up friends ships and also have the stigma of being kept down a year.

Looking at US a child 7m younger than my dd (yr 1) is now starting preK rather than here would be YrR. Dd will i think be in yr 3 when they start grade 1.

With grammar schools surely the results below are already age adjusted (which is i think what the poster is saying). But even with that there are still hundreds more sept vs aug. So what would be the actual results without this correction?
When do they sit the 11+, it sounded like its in the sept of yr 6?
Maybe jun-aug could have a certain number of places ring-fenced then be allowed to retake the test later in the year. Or just expect the grammar to only take by month in proportion.

What stands out is that what we are testing in all exams is probably not right if it is so affected by age. So immature kids (and boys) are at a disadvantage.
Maybe an expectation that your dc will have to resit alevels to get the marks they deserve makes more sense.
However, this wont help the stress and anxiety. The affect on leadership skills. Possibly this could be improved by schools actively promoting SB kids. Giving them more responsibilities.
A lot of jobs rely now on doing a good interview and that's not great when you are lacking confidence.

You see I don't think the 12 months age spread is the issue. The issue IMO is that teaching (expectations/format) is aimed at the older half of this age range. If it were aimed at / appropriate for the younger half, then these kids would still experience being less able than their older classmates, yes; but they would NOT experience that school goes over their head, school is not for them, they 'fail' at school. They would not miss out on learning (despite being present) from being too young/immature to access that learning.

At age 4/5/6 half a year makes a big difference, less so the older the children get, so if you started formal schooling later, then it would be easier to 'pitch' the teaching.

But starting at age 4/5 IMO it is harmful (for some) to pitch the teaching at the older half. Pitching it at the younger half would not be without it's problems either - some kids may feel under-challenged. But IMO just because a child is capable of 'formal learning' does not mean that 'formal learning' is the best thing for that child at that moment!

It seems to me that if you insist on starting young with a 12 months cohort, then you will always be doing 'wrong' for some children - some will be under-challenged, or some will be out of their depths. But being under-challenged for a few early years (until things even out - the age gap gets relatively smaller) IMO has less long term negative effects than feeling out of your depth for the same few early years does.

And the under-challenged problem could be addressed by offering early starts/acceleration, whereas deceleration/entry deferral comes with a host of problems (people choosing to do it for advantage, poorer people not being able to afford to do it despite it being best for their child).

So if you are going to make very young children start school, then make school appropriate for their age. Make reception appropriate for 4 year olds, and Y1 appropriate for 5 year olds. Those who are nearly 5 upon starting reception/nearly 6 upon entering Y1 may feel that they would be capable to deal with more formal learning. But just because they would be ABLE to do more formal learning, doesn't mean that it would be best for them. And if their parents DO worry that they are missing out/being held back by being in a play-based environment in Y1 at 6, they can choose to send them to school early/to accelerate them.

I have 2 very different experiences with my two summer born boys.
DS1 is August born, when he started reception, he could read and didn't learn much during the year since he had such a love of learning. DS2 is July born, and young for his age in addition to being young for the year. From the very first parents meeting we were told he would need to catch up! .... and this is in an independent school where there we 2 teachers and a TA for 18 kids!! So the first few years of his schooling have not been positive, he was treated like the runt of the pack which has resulted is poor self-confidence. He has moved to a different school now at the start of Yr3 and I already see a huge difference of approach and acceptance of the age differences between children in the year. I have no doubt his self- confidence will improve. Having said this, we have had to do a huge amount at home to help him 'catch-up', with basically no guidance from teachers.
So yes, some school just have a poor policy toward younger children.

i am no statistic, but i prepped before school and during reception and now my child is excelling (orange level books in year 1).
i really emphasized numbers and letters early, in a fun reading setting, and also have lots of posters around the house.
for me Cbeebies was the most educational tv and also useful because the presenters are all articulate (rather than cartoons).
i also chose a nursery which started phonics and numbers and learning through play, in quite a big way, from a young age.
i think emotionally summer borns might lag a little bit but with additional support it doesn't have to be a disaster. i was very very sensitive to it though so i really made provisions. by reception i could see it would be ok and she wasn't up to speed for that year, not at all. but it has all settled now.

ktown but to your anedote, we did quite the opposite with our summer born, no numbers or letters before school fore example, and she still ended reception able to answer everything in the KS1 sats paper, and she was certainly never emotionally behind. The anecdotes though, particularly of those of us interested enough to be on a primary forum on mumsnet are not going to be very representative of the problem, the problem really isn't that huge such that you won't see loads of examples of strong summer and weak autumn compared to their cohort.

On my walk just a minute ago, I also wondered if we actually need to look further into the situations of birth as opposed to the school. Are the kids conceived after christmas more likely to have a better environment in the womb from their clean living, new year, new exercise regime of their parent. And are they possibly more likely to be planned, rather than the result of a christmas party excess? And do these things make a different - we do know maternal health around conception does, but is this actually part of the effect?

Presumably this could be tested by comparing with the north american schools where the cut off is Jan 1st, rather than Sept 1st, but the christmas partying habits are different.

brilliotic what you say makes sense, other than I think the EYFS that I saw at DD's school was appropriate to 4 year olds, but I've no idea if my recognition of what is appropriate is actually generally true, obviously my 4yr old was very much more "grown up" than many.

Right, so school starting age is too young and school places are at a premium.
For the next 6 years I propose a mega school building project - primary and secondary. And mega overhaul of teachers pay and conditions and training availability.
To ease pressure on school places for the next 6 years, only 10 months of kids will be accepted.
So September 2018 start if for kids with 1 Sept - 30 june. The following year the 1July - 30 April kids accepted.
At the end of 6 years, we have sufficient motivated and less stressed teachers, plenty of school places, and a starting age if not less than 5 years old.

I'll pay for it all with the magic money tree, and make the space by cutting down all the space hogging money trees........

In terms of solutions, the international evidence is that the gap between the youngest and oldest in a year is smaller and narrows much quicker in school systems with a higher age of entry. This points to the issue of formal education starting too young.

The research also finds that summer born children regardless of their actual attainment were less confident in their abilities than autumn/winter borns. This is one of the reasons why the gap narrows at A Level because fewer summer borns take them ditto University outcomes though there is still an effect. Far fewer summerborns get into Oxbridge or RG unis too.

sirfred,
my own August born boy found YR easy academically. Some of our NCT friends' kids did ok, some struggled.
Socially, it was extremely tough for mine, easier for others. The more structured Y1 was a huge relief, socially, for mine; but I've seen others struggle hugely, academically.
I think a lot depends on the quality of the setting.

However, statistics show us that less than half of summer-born (April-August) boys achieve a 'Good Level of Development' by end of reception. Which to me indicates that the expectations are too high (or they are not being taught appropriately, or both).
And with the tough expectations for KS1 these days (again, my DS sailed through but that is not relevant) a lot of schools are forcing more content into Reception in order to be able to get through everything in KS1. Then those kids that don't grasp the concepts in reception year find themselves falling more and more behind as KS1 'builds' on that very weak foundation.

We deferred our summer born because we just don't want him in yr 1 at just turned 5. The current expectations are not only inappropriate but actively harmful IMHO. Moving back to starting at 5 or raising the starting age for everyone to 6 or 7 would be a much better solution.

The issue IMO is that teaching (expectations/format) is aimed at the older half of this age range purely one dc but for my summer born boy the reception learning through play was a disaster as his concentration was dreadful when others were playing, plus he would never choose to do anything with any hint of putting pen to paper.
Into year 1 and he flew because the more formal atmosphere of all learning suited him. He didn't feel that he was missing out on playing because they were all doing work.

But things my autumn born girls were told they'd have to keep an eye on, for him we were always told "oh he's a young boy, he'll grow into it". For him, this was true, but for other children it isn't, and the early intervention can be important. So I think by not expecting so much of the summer babies we are putting them at a disadvantage for the ones that do need an extra help by not seeking it as early.

As a summer born late July I struggled in primary but by year 8 secondary I'd caught up in everything bar maths. Hated and still hate it but I'm a English language teacher with a BA and MA. I remember having some extra classes at primary school and that helped