11 Plus Exams Forum

Am I right in thinking that many so-called high performing schools are biased against August and other late born children. It seems from SPGS, Godolphin and Latymer and others that they seem to have a policy that disciminates on age (as well as on the ability of the child to pass the entrance exams and interviews).

I think they basically take the best exam results regardless of age. I know of one child who got in a year early to Godolphin because their score was 19th and no compensation was made for her age, although she was told she would have been in the top 3 had she applied in her correct age group. I think its different with Grammars although I don't know that system very well.

Yes it is different with grammars where raw scores are typically adjusted to take into account birthday month. However I don't think it makes a huge difference (unless of course you are on the borderline between pass and fail, when it can be all important)

I would suggest any decent independent school would make some informal allowance for age at the margin and not be totally dogmatic about this

Surely it matters a great deal. An August birthday child would be significantly disadvantage compared to a September child. It's just another form of cream-skimming where the search for exam results in the league tables distort the educational goals of the charitable foundation.

They are not actively biased, they just take the top results. One could argue that a coed school should accept a level of up to 2 years lower in boys because they develop later, but I'm sure most would deem that unfair or even ridiculous. Not every August birthday is at a disadvantage. I expect when children are assessed at 4 years old in London schools then birth date may be taken into consideration. By 11, when they are formally examined, it is assumed that most will have caught up. I have friends who did feel their childREN were clearly much younger during the reception year but by Year 3/4 there was no difference.

From my understanding from other posts on this forum a child's score is compared with other children's scores who have the same birth month... so Sept born child is compared with other Sept children and so on... it may be that Sept/Oct children have to score higher BUT their scores are in relation to other children born in the same month. Hope this makes sense and is accurate.

The above is for state grammars in Bham. I attended the open day today for KEHS a leading independent girls' school and this question was asked by a fellow parent. The response from the staff was that birth month was taken into account when marking test scripts and in making final decisions re the allocation of places.

Best Wishes Clarendon

"It's just another form of cream-skimming where the search for exam results in the league tables distort the educational goals of the charitable foundation."

If you believe that this is how a particular independent school operates then don't send your child there. Like I said before any decent school (and certainly my DD school did) would take age into account-at least informally.

In terms of expected difference in performance between a September and August birthday due to age re 11+ performance they are on this site somewhere. From my memory (and I might be completely wrong here) it is about 10%.

Ouch!

It's not meant to sound abrupt.

It's just with my DD going to an independent school where every child matters and the school does the best for them regardless of whether the league table takes a hit, it's hard to see the attraction in a school that does the opposite.