This report has no abstract and the executive summary is too long for reproduction here so I bring you the first section and the policy recommendations from that summary. I hope you will find the report both interesting and useful in its entirety.
There is a long history of research in the UK and elsewhere showing that children who are born at the end of the academic year tend to have lower educational attainment than children born at the start of the academic year. In England, where the academic year runs from 1 September to 31 August, this means that children born in the summer tend to perform worse than children born in the autumn. There is also growing evidence that the month in which children are born matters for a range of other skills and behaviours as well, such as the likelihood of being assessed as having special educational needs at school, and children’s self-esteem and confidence in their own ability.
Why should this matter to policy-makers? There are at least two reasons: first, because these differences in educational attainment and other skills and behaviours may affect children’s well-being in the short term; and second, because they may have potentially serious long-term consequences for children’s lives.
This report aims to inform the policy debate on this important issue by providing clear evidence on the magnitude of the differences in outcomes between children and adults born at the start and end of the academic year in England and, more importantly, offering new insight into the drivers of these differences. This is vital in order to determine the most appropriate policy response.
We make use of data from a variety of studies, including the National Pupil Database (NPD), the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE), the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and Understanding Society. For most of our analysis, we use simple regression models to identify mean differences in outcomes between individuals born at different times of the year.
Policy recommendations
On the basis of our results, we recommend that the following policy actions are taken to help address the differences in test scores and wider outcomes between those born at the start and end of the academic year:
- National achievement test scores should be age-adjusted to account for the fact that children born at different times of the year have to sit the tests when they are different ages.
- These age-adjusted scores should be used to calculate school league table positions, to determine entry to schools that select on the basis of ability, and potentially to assign pupils to ability groups within schools.
- They should also be used to assess whether a pupil can continue into further and higher education. But when pupils leave school, they should take with them their non-age-adjusted grades, to ensure that employers can be confident that pupils have achieved a particular absolute standard.
- It is not necessary to give parents greater flexibility over the age at which children start school, as this is not the main driver of the differences in attainment between children born at the start and end of the academic year.
- Schools, teachers and parents should be made more aware of the potential disadvantages that children born later in the academic year may face, and more could be done to document and share best practice in reducing inequalities between children born at the start and end of the academic year.
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