Competitions and winter born advantage...

[Mumto2two]

In terms of competitions such as Bebras, Primary Maths challenge etc., it does seem that without any form of age adjustment, older children are clearly advantaged.
Our daughter is summer born, so at age 8 had a high merit on Bebras in the 8-10 category, and a high distinction at age 9. Clearly age has an impact..and now at 10 she has to compete against 12 year olds, which seems unfair.
Equally with the maths challenge. She scored one mark less than the 2 winter born kids who were chosen to go to bonus round, which also seems a little unfair. This must surely be a common theme where age is not differentiated in any way?

Can you imagine the protests BTW from parents of Sept born DC if GCSEs were amended based on a sliding scale, giving x% more marks for each month younger the child was? Do you really think people would be happy with that? And I speak as a mum of 3x summer borns.

I agree, but by teenage years any difference in cognitive function between the two, becomes statistically insignificant, so yes, there would not be standardisation for GCSE and beyond. It is quite different with school aged children...

*primary school aged children!

Clary yes of course they would be happy with it! Do you see anyone complaining about any other age standardised score? Eg 11+? It's not just done on a sliding scale it's done statisticaly so rather than comparing an entire cohort you compare only with children of the same age. It's unequivocally fair so no one will complain if being born in September doesn't give kids an advantage then there would be no statistical difference and the marks wouldn't be scaled differently.

@mumto2two no you're totally wrong. The recent research on the UK noted there was a significant difference at gcse and the recommendation was to use an age standardised score.

It might be worth talking to the school OP. In our school, Bebras is done on age not year group, so within the same year group the older ones might be in the next bracket up from the younger ones.

But what's the solution? You have to have the cut off somewhere. In Scotland it's different. In Australia it's different. No doubt they also complain about being just above or just below the cut off. Or perhaps they don't, given what sunflowerfield said.

And the advantage in sport doesn't always follow - my son has a November birthday so only has 2 years in the U20 age group for athletics, where other teens have the benefit of 3 years in that age group. He's been small for his age all through school so never benefited as old in his year.

Anyway, there's an "easy" solution, don't have sex between August and November (and plenty of it in Feb/March)

crips I really don't think people would be happy. I don't know whether anyone complains about the 11+ as thankfully that's not a thing in my area - nor most areas of the U.K.

But GCSEs are a thing everywhere , I'll maybe ask DD's sept 1 born friend who got a fab 9999999888 in her GCSEs if she'd be OK to lower them all a grade to make it fairer 🙄 she's a nice girl but still I doubt it somewhat. I think she did so well because she is v clever and worked v hard. if you (or anyone) is saying she doesn't deserve those top marks because she's just lucky to be born then, yes, I think you'd have some argument. JMO tho.

Yr6 sports day, there's always a few girls who are almost women already. They are much taller, have boobs ,they thunder away. They've just got adult size frames & a huge amount more muscle mass with that, compared to most the girls.

One of them was August born this year....

Should she not be allowed to complete with the girls who won't hit puberty for another 3 yrs? I mean, there is ALWAYS unfairness. I'm in the 'Get over it' camp, in case you couldn't tell.

-DH & me & DS were all in the youngest 3m of our intake...

lljkk With sports though it's not the competing that's the problem per se in primary. It is picking 'the best' (which skews to 'the eldest') for teams, and then the teams get the extra coaching, & the extra match play. This means that over time the children who were 'good' due to age become 'better' due to extra input. This then encourages them to keep going, and over time drips right the way to professional sports.

OP You do know you posted this in Secondary though, don't you?

@CripsSandwiches I wasn’t aware of that regards GCSE performance, but perhaps it’s not surprising. Thank you for mentioning.
You are one of few who clearly understands that standardisation is not about reducing or adding marks, but comparing like with like! I do wish more people would appreciate this, it’s frustrating that there are so many misconceptions out there. Mine included!

@TeenPlusTwenties You know I hadn’t even thought of that...thank you
Seems to be the most popular place for school chat...and being year 6, looking at secondary schools etc. The title completely eluded me!

In school assessments their age is taken into account. Not so much in competitions.
Use it as a life lesson.
Prepare your child for the road, not the road for your child.

mumto2two ‘Educational psychology very clearly recognises this, and if a 10 yr old who has an IQ of 150, is pitched against an 11yr old who has the same IQ, in a test that measures logic in some way...the 11year old will inevitably do better....’
Could you provide the link to this research please?

There's an August born girl who DS went to school with. Was always passionate about football, always in the local leagues. She plays for England now.

But hey ho, if you want to enjoy the self-pity party then get on with it. 🤷

lljkk There is a difference between statistics and individual points of data. Of course individual summer borns can do very well in sport, academics, whatever. But as a cohort the stats show that summer borns are disadvantaged over autumn borns in terms of GCSE results, and young in year do less well in sports. Read the book, it's really interesting.

I'm very young in year (August born and accelerated a year). I also buck the trend. Doesn't mean the trend isn't there.

@lljkk I would agree with you where sport or other non-cognitive activities are concerned. She’s not picked for A teams either, but it doesn’t bother her..or us!
I’m purely talking about competitions that are very much based on logic and cognitive function..which are scientifically proven to correlate with age, with statistically significant differences between months, for children who are still young and very much developing their cognitive functions. At any age in this group, children should be compared like with like. It happens in ability based school selection tests, because that is the only fair way to select at age 10/11.

@clary Standardisation as in the 11plus, would not involve adjusting any child’s grade, it would mean that a September born child’s performance, is only compared with other September born children...and so on. It would of course be impractical to do this for exams like GCSE, as there would need to be a definable ‘grade’ for the entire cohort.
As it happens I’m a summer born too..and did very well academically. As did my other daughter...but my post was not about this, it was specifically about ‘logic’ based competitions such as Bebras and PMS.

@ProggyMat The very fact that Educational Psychology Assessments for children..standardise by Age and Month...?

If you knew about these disadvantages why didn't you aim for an autumn or spring term baby?

We went for spring term, to be mid-way through the year. Not too young on starting not too old to be bored by doing almost an extra year of pre-school.

also sports where the impact goes on right the way to professional level.
But sports have different cut offs, so a different set of children are advantaged/disadvantaged. When I played tennis the cut off was 1st January.

Equally with the maths challenge. She scored one mark less than the 2 winter born kids who were chosen to go to bonus round, which also seems a little unfair. This must surely be a common theme where age is not differentiated in any way?
How do you suggest they choose it if there are 2 allowed to go on to the next round? You can't do it by " oh you're younger". How would your dd have felt if having scored the top score, they told her that a child in the year below had scored 5 marks lower and so they felt that she'd done better relative to their age so was going through?

My feeling is that the age has more impact because people expect less. It's a self defeating circle. I heard so often with ds "oh he's a summer boy, you expect that..." when winter born girls performing similarly had actions put in place to help them.
So he wasn't expected nor helped to improve in the way the winter borns were.

Never heard of Bebras but certainly UKMT are a charity and I'm very grateful they run these competitions. I doubt they have the funding to standardise scores as well. There's lots of things you could adjust by to make things more like for like - private/state school, girls/boys, age, wealth of parents, IQ of parents etc but the reality is the score is just what each child is capable of now. It's not meant to equalise all inequalities.

If your DD is that bothered schools can pay for children to go through to second round of UKMT competition. Mine love being up against older children, that's part of the fun and clear from the outset. I would just encourage her to keep trying.

Witchend But sports have different cut offs, so a different set of children are advantaged/disadvantaged.

I know. perhaps people should be advised to check the cut off date for a sport before deciding which one to sign their 5 yo up for!

Maybe I'm being dense but I don't really understand what the solution is?

No matter where the cut off is there is always going to be kids who are the youngest in their age group.

Mumto2two
I asked if you could provide a link to research that shows a summer born child with a IQ of 150 when pitched against an autumn born child with the the same IQ will inevitably result in the autumn child doing better.
I get standardisation by age and month but would be interested in knowing why given both children have an IQ of 150 that the older child would inevitably do better given they both have the same ‘innate ability’

glittery

Well for academics you could in theory age adjust. So for GCSEs instead of marking on a curve for the whole cohort, you could mark on 6 curves with just 2 months in each, end ensure the same proportion got 8s, 6s passes, whatever on each curve.

For sport you could do something in primary schools and primary competitions where picking 'the best team' and 'winning' were not as well rewarded. Maybe by forcing larger squads and rotation of players. Though how that would work with smaller schools I don't know. Also in primary more emphasis on skills development compared with playing games and keeping score.