Research: September-borns do better at GCSE?

[stubiff]

Following on from my offer here

TeenTimesTwo asked

Do children born in September perform better at GCSE? Does the most recent evidence still suggest it?

Caveats/Disclaimers:
We are talking averagely, not every child born in September.
The graph is from FFT (see below).
There may be other reports/data you want to look at.
If you know of any other relevant reports then please shout.
Don't shoot the messenger!


Data Source IFS
"...large differences in educational attainment between children born at the start and end of the academic year in England."
"differences are largest soon after children start school and decrease as they get older."
"relative to children born in September, children born in August are 6.4% less likely to achieve five GCSEs or equivalents at grades A*–C."
"and around 2% less likely to go to university at age 18 or 19"
"and around 2.3% less likely to attend a high-status Russell Group institution if they do"
"even a one-month difference in age has an effect"
"those born in January are 2.8% less likely to achieve five A*–C grades in GCSE"
"those born in August are 5.4% more likely to be labelled as having mild special educational needs at age 11"

Data Source FFT
Data Source FFT Education Datalab
"August-born pupils close the gap as they get older but remain behind September-born peers by the end of KS4."
"in terms of raw attainment (Attainment 8), they (Aug-born) remain 0.3 grades per subject behind (Sep-born)"

Data Source Durham University
"Probably the simplest solution in the short term is to routinely age-standardise all assessment results."
"no valid reason why the younger children in each year group should have a worse chance in education because of a bureaucratically convenient decision outside their control."

[ProggyMat]

They would be smallest, slowest, tiredest. (Statistically)
Not in my DD's case
Plus, she is not'sporty'- no interest in that malarkey whatsoever.
I'm being naughty as I dislike quantititative ' number chrunching' research and much prefer qualitative stuff.

[OtraCosaMariposa]

It would be interesting to see stats for Scotland separated by month.

It would - although it wouldn't be GCSE as we don't have that here. You'd also have to differentiate between the deferred January birthday who sat a National 5 in May at the age of 16 and 4 months and a non-deferred January birthday who was 15 years and 4 months.

There's also a whole other class / socio-demographic issue, more affluent families are more likely to defer as the extra year's childcare costs isn't as much of an issue. And it's no secret that children from more affluent backgrounds do better at school.

[Helix1244]

I think when you frame it as a SB yr 2 is 12m older than a sept yr r. But the expectations are so different.
Simlarly to a sept yr 2 being 12m younger than a summer year 4. It is easier to see how they can get far behind/ahead.
A sept 1 yr behind would be bottom.
An aug 1 yr behind at start of yr r would be like a 3.0yo so very different to a class of 4.0-5.0yo.

[Arewedone]

Our experience is that when we transferred back to UK September born Dd was Y8 overseas but had to repeat Y7 due to UK cut off of Aug 31. So went from being the youngest in her year previously, to the oldest in her UK year. She went into a highly academic selective school and went from being top of her old school as the youngest in the year, to being academically within the top 20% as the eldest in her highly academic school which could be in part due to a curriculum disparity or because parents at her uK school are heavily invested in their Dcs education or just the kids are naturally bright.
Fast forward to having just sat GCSEs and she is on track to be top scoring, as are all her cohort. However there is a noticeable difference in her maturity compared with classmates who are only just turning 16 now. Each year the teachers have commented in school reports about the level of her maturity and awareness of others and respect of varying viewpoints.
So my personal conclusion is bright kids in an academic setting are just as likely to achieve the same results academically, however may not be at the same level of development emotionally or physically.
At Dds super selective school the chunk of her year are March/April born, there are only 11 with birthdays Sept -Dec

[Arewedone]

August born DS started school at just over the age of 5 and is predicted all A* at A level. I think a mix of nature v nurture is probably the answer.

[Piggywaspushed]

The issue about sport has dogged my July born boy's life and is a huge issue particularly in the UK where physicality in sport is valued over skill. He developed huge self esteem issues feeling small for his age (he wasn't : he was younger!). Now , aged just 18, he is a hulking brute of 6 foot but STILL measures himself and believes himself to be small. That has inflicted more damage than academic underachievement.

CATs are interesting because they ARE age adjusted. But then I guess the projected grades extrapolated out of them aren't...

My DS did OK at GCSE : not stellar, just OK. Six more months and who knows what might have happened. I would argue the biggest differences are in literacy rather than knowledge based cramming subjects. The closer to an adult you are at English GCSE, the better.

I think lots of stuff , academic and sporting, should be age adjusted. With boys, it is not just about intellectual development. Emotional development is also behind anyway, so will often be stark in summer boys.

Anecdotally, I can name an August 31st child who went to Oxford : was a girl.

It is interesting that people refer to children as 'behind' who aren't really. GCSEs are supposed to measure achievement at 16. Quite a large number of the cohort are not yet 16 when they sit the exams (and even younger in schools where early entry still persists!)

There was a Twitter thread about this a while back. This idea that it all works through by 16 seems to be a myth now. That's a concern.

I am a September baby so viewed as privileged: I went to school in Scotland, though, so was smack bang in middle of year group! TeacherTapp did a question on this a while back and found that loads of teachers were born September to January!

[Teachermaths]

Why such a gap from Sept to Dec? Surely if it was "just" age then the spread would be even?

Or is it that sept/Oct borns are treated differently from day 1?

At Secondary I don't know pupils birth month, therefore it has no impact on how I teach students. I can imagine in reception that teachers do know this information and perhaps have an unconscious bias?

[Arewedone]

Ultimately I believe there are too many variables to discern a conclusive outcome.

[Helix1244]

Could be any reason
Sept/oct/nov are for this reason high burth months
I imagine dec to be low. So more volatile data.
Sept -dec get more preschool (5terms).
Jan for eg are the oldest swimming wise for age cut off. And may be the oldest in other countries which could have a very minor effect when coming here.
I imagine classes clumping from oldest down. Leaving youngest out.

This data it for 1 year i think so not necessarily a pattern.

Schools do know age im sure particularly in multi form as they will try to divide equally (primary).

[Arewedone]

Socio/ economic background
Private/state educated
Large family/ small family
Cultural heritage
Gender

[Piggywaspushed]

When I was a HOY, I always made sure I knew who the oldest and the very youngest were in my year groups (400 students so quite a good number to draw some conclusions) and the differences were really really obvious. They were mainly emotional and social but that will usually impact upon academics , too.

[Piggywaspushed]

But maths, I think the argument would be that we should know birth months and should , therefore, teach differently in some ways. When we find children are 'behind' , for example, at secondary, do we look at their chronological age?

[Arewedone]

But ‘ behind’ is so open to interpretation

[Arewedone]

Tbh I find I am fascinated by nature/ nurture

[Piggywaspushed]

That's why I put it in speech marks...

[Teachermaths]

Piggywaspushed interesting that you think this will be the next thing we are expected to know. I'll be honest I don't know pp kids in my classes. There's too many and teaching them all well should be the priority. I don't agree with labelled seating plans and visiting students first just because they are pp, younger etc. If they are struggling I will know and help them.
Nature/nurture is fascinating. It'd be interesting to see this study repeated over a few years to see if other years are the same.

[Piggywaspushed]

I agree that quality teaching is the priority, absolutely. Nonetheless it is interesting that we view students as immature academically and/or emotionally without considering whether they are just younger!

[Arewedone]

But by the fact they are younger implies they are less developed emotionally?

[Arewedone]

Academically however younger students can be taught rote! We lived in South Korea and the maths standard was phenomenal, but ask those 9 year olds the reasoning behind the calculations and they had no idea!

[Kazzyhoward]

Personally, I think a child retaking a school year should be more commonly allowed/encouraged. At the moment, it seems to be only in extreme cases, but, especially for younger children in the class, there may well come a time when it's clear that stepping back and re-taking a year may well be the right course of action.

I know there'll be the howls of anguish about them being stygmatised etc., which I understand if it's a one in a hundred, but we need to find ways to overcome it, and the impact would be less if more kids did it. There'd also be less of an issue if the child moved schools and went back a year as the new peer group probably wouldn't know that the "new kid" was a year older.

And surely better GCSE results is something to try to attain, even at the cost of a bit of disruption, than potentially a lifetime of poor jobs/careers due to not getting the grades they were actually capable of.

[Teachermaths]

With the idea of children moving years etc, the GCSE resit pass percentage is incredibly low. (I think around 22% last year). There are obviously other factors influencing this but if all students needed was another year, would we expect that percentage to be higher?

[Pebbles574]

Late summer DS here and I am convinced this has had a HUGE impact on his life

Big issues with sport as he was labelled as 'not very good' from age 5
Only went to school half days for first term and struggled to catch up after that.
He has always had massive confidence issues about being the smallest, slowest, etc.
Was impacted socially by some clubs/events where he was separated from friends/ his peer group by virtue of his age e.g. cut off points being age at the end of the school term. I seem to have spent my entire life sending emails begging for him to be allowed to be included with the 'older group' and signing waivers.

He did OK, but not outstandingly in his GCSEs, but they seemed to co-incide with maximum hormonal changes and growth spurts which many of his friends had already been through up to 12 months previously.

[Piggywaspushed]

I hear you, pebbles!

My DS was actually a talented sportsman but gave up both cricket and football. In football his relative size was a disadvantage and in cricket it was arrogance, bravado and public school dominance , so a different issue. But his smaller size did mean he was terrified by boys a year older than him bowling at him
British sport refuses to address these issues at junior level.

[Naem]

I was seriously thinking of taking DD (finishing Year 8) out for a year and homeschooling her, then putting her back into the year below (who would now have caught up to where she left school, ie be about to go into Year 9 of a three year GCSEs), so as to deal with these issues (July born, really really immature in many ways, ie late in terms of physical development even for her age), and everybody I talked to thought I was mad.
Have decided not to do it, because DD has over the last two years found a lovely group of friends, and while school itself is not great, the friendship group is, and she (and I) don't want to jeopardise that.
But I have an awful feeling that i am sacrificing her ability to attain at GCSEs for her social life. Amongst other things, I am really suspicious that the extra time she needs for exams (which she really does need, she only finishes 70% of an exam if she doesn't get extra time), is actually about being young in year, and wonder if she had an extra year to practice speeding up she wouldn't need it, or need it so badly. We are probably going to have to really fight for it for GCSEs, because at the moment we don't have any "diagnosis", just what is obvious to everybody, which is that she is so much slower at doing work (that includes homework, not just exams), than the rest of the class, even though when she actually completes it, she can do it to a high standard (eg she knows how to do most of the maths problems on the paper, just if she doesnt' get extra time, she will only solve 70% and run out of time).
Starting her off on the GCSE journey next year is making me feel quick sick in my stomach, as I really don't think she is ready for it, but I don't want to break her out of her social group either, that is so important, given that up until Year 5 she never really had friends at all (and for many years, didn't even notice, again I think because she was too young to, she was happy parallel playing).

[Naem]

quite, not quick (amongst other typos)