Age limits

[Stressed?Moi?]

I have chatted with another mum who has said that it is unfair that her early September born daughter has to get more points than an end of August born child. Is this true? Is this fair? I reasoned that the latter child has hd nearly 1 year's less exposure to numbers, words and general problem solving and is therefore "disadvantaged". Is her perception of this system of marking correct and what are other peoples' opinions. Cheers

[Belinda]

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[Stressed?Moi?]

That's great - many thanks.

[pheasantchick]

I can understand the principle behind this. However, in the lower school my son attended, the whole year group was attending school by early October so everyone had more or less the same amount of education.

Also, the cleverest one in our family with five A-levels ( taken in mid 80's) is my brother. His birthday, end of august!

[menagerie]

Our DC were summer born and didn't start reception full time until after Easter. They were much slower to catch up in yr 1 and work had been covered (lots of phonics) that they hadn't ever encountered but yr 1 teachers assumed they knew. Now, although they are both near the top of the class mentally, they've still had almost one year less alive in which to read the books, learn the vocab, do the maths etc required for the exam, so I think standardisation is fair. Though some schools (Wallington?) have recently dropped standardisation and go with raw scores.

[loopylou]

I think being subjected to a year's less language and experience (as opposed to formal education) is a disadvantage to children who take the test aged 10 and 2 months against those who take it aged exactly 11 years old.

However there are also many other disadvantages that are not factored in which are, I think, equally significant and apply to lots of children. A child who is born 3 months prematurely in December (due in March) for example or a child who had hearing loss unresolved until the age of 3 (glue ear or similar) or a child who had ongoing complications of a childhood illness or infection or any number of things really. Whilst being young can be a disadvantage, so can being a September born premature baby or a September born child who failed to acquire speech until aged 4 due to hearing problems etc.

Not every Grammar School test uses age standardisation - Wilson's in our area (Surrey) does not use it at all for example.