At what age does month of birth stop being considered?

[AndiMac]

I have 2 kids at opposite ends of the school year. One is a winter baby, with lots of summer babies in her Y1 class with her. The other is an August baby and starting next year. I'd say both are about equal in ability, but obviously this develops with age. So I know that their teachers take into consideration the child's age (ie when in the school year they have their birthday) in reception and year 1, but I don't know when it is felt everyone is old enough to be on an equal playing field.

Does anyone have any insight into this?

[learnandsay]

Physically the children at the younger end of the class might never catch up because they'll always be almost a year younger. Academically who knows? They might already start ahead of most of their classmates regardless of age, depending on what they've been taught at home/nursery.

[iseenodust]

IME teachers don't give much weight to it at all (except perhaps in allocating nativity speaking roles) and the KS1 tests make no allowance for it all.

[Namely]

As a teacher I always take note of my June, July, August babies but each child is taught on their own individual needs. I have had a little boy who was a 2A in year one and was 360 days younger than the oldest child in my class!

[redskyatnight]

I would have thought that teachers focussed more on the individual child and their specific abilities rather than the month they were born in.

In DD's school year (Y2), the "top" children all (bar 1) have birthdays in the latter part of the year. It's not a given that in the small sample that is a class size/year that Autumn birthday children will be the ones that are ahead.

[AndiMac]

Oh, I know that looking at them individually is the way to go, but part of that, to a certain age, must be when they were born as well.

Someone told me, but I have no idea of the truth of it, that the 11+ exam is weighted a bit based on when the child's birthday is. I was surprised to hear this, so again, really no idea if it's true or not.

[singinggirl]

The 11+ is weighted for age - the raw scores are age-standardised. 100 is the 'average' of any given age, here in Kent scores of 120+ are required for Grammar Schools.

[ChippingInLovesAutumn]

11+ weighted?? I fail to see how that could be done.

I think by the time they move up to senior school they have had enough years of schooling to put them on a level playing field academically. Socially it really depends a lot on how they are treat at home.

I think if you have a summer baby, you have to be careful not to baby them more than you would if you had a winter baby once they've started school otherwise you set them apart from their peers even more, but at the same time, they are almost a year younger - it's quite tough really.

[cutegorilla]

Statistically it still makes a difference to exam results at GCSE level. There is no allowance tor that though.

[ChippingInLovesAutumn]

Singinggirl - really? I didn't think they'd do that. It seems quite unfair, they've all had the same amount of 'schooling'?!

[singinggirl]

I think the theory is that the 11+ doesn't test what is taught in school - the verbal and non-verbal reasoning are totally seperate to the National Curriculum - and the maths is very different too. (e.g. types of algebra that are not routinely taught before secondary). Think codes, logic, sequencing, patterns etc. So the theory behind them is that the 11+ tests innate intelligence, not the standard of a child's primary school. But then of course we come to tutoring...

CAT tests, which are frequently used by secondary schools to asses their new intake are also age-standardised.

[socharlotte]

Yep 11+ is standardised.they plot all candidates ages Vs their raw scores to find the coefficient to adjust raw scores by.This coefficient will vary for every cohort and every test..
the amount of schooling is supposed to be irrelevant because they are testing reasoning ability which is supposedly innate.

[AndiMac]

Aha, good to know thanks. I guess that's probably the last marker then, not that it's necessarily even going to come up. But knowledge is power and all that.

[singersgirl]

DS1's English teacher last year mentioned that he was very young in the set. He was in Y9, so 13/14.

[arista]

my daughter was born on the 28 Aug and is currently in yr 1. i think you can see the difference between the older who seems more mature than the younger one. Amazingly my daughter is the younger one and is in the top reading group I think they are all being taught the same thing so should be consider equal. But reading these posts above I've learnt a lot I did not know, so thanks.

[anice]

I think it switches at some point. So that its not about here's the excuse for low achievement in summer born children but instead it flips to that's not very impressive for a September born child.

(Or maybe that's just my own private reaction to a very pushy and smug mother of a September child in Ds1's class which is full of out-performing summer babies.)

[mrz]

As a teacher I don't think about month of birth .. some summer birthdays outshine their older classmates from day one ...take each child as an individual
The eldest child in my current Y1 class is probably the least physically, emotionally, academically developed

[BlingBubbles]

I have read (can't remember where now) that by the age of 7 it evens out academically and everyone regardless of birthdays will be on a level playing field.

I know of a few private schools that put children in classes according to their birthday dates for the first few years. It does make a lot of sense, an August born child is a whole year behind an September born one and when they are between 3-6 that is a really big gap, especially if you compare boys v girls.

[mumofthemonsters808]

My DD is a late August birthday and it has never been taken into consideration. I'm not even sure her teachers were aware of the fact as it was never mentioned and despite her being in a class dominated by winter birthdays she always held her own.

[redskyatnight]

Actually just thought that DS's school measures their reading and spelling ages and compares them to chronological age. IMO these are quite crude measures though. DS is poor at spelling but also young for his year, so his spelling age doesn't look "so bad" compared to his chronological age, but his actual spelling ability is very poor when compared against his peers (which is actually where it is compared).

[mrz]

I would imagine your son's school uses chronological age to calculate a standardised score

[3b1g]

My twins have July birthdays, I would say that I was still a little bit aware of it in Y3, but more for social maturity reasons.

[realcoalfire]

There is still a difference at GCSE apparently

[VonHerrBurton]

I just fail to see how a child at 11 years of age would still have 'young for their year' used as any type of benchmark, physically, socially or academically.

OK, maybe up to Y2, and possibly mine some boys who seem to take an age to catch up with most girls emotionally, but as another poster has said, they've all had the same amount of schooling and it really annoys me when I hear parents of Y6 dc still banging on about how young s/he is for the year at 11 years old.

[realcoalfire]

so are you saying you don't believe the statistics?

[VonHerrBurton]

If that was a q posed to me, realcoal , I'm afraid I haven't read The Statistics.

I'd rather go by what I see going on around me. Some of the youngest dc in ds's class (Y5) are the most mature, some of the oldest are the silliest, mid-year academically brightest - so on and so on.

So whilst a YR starter who may be 12 months younger than some of her peers and had never been parted from her mum since she was born, may seem much, much younger and at a 'disadvantage' than an older child with 3 years of nursery experience - I don't believe by the time they both leave primary school, all with 7 years of education behind them, that difference of age would make any difference.