results and age

[DW]

I agree. My daughter is an end of July birthday and she didn't start school full time until 6 months after some of the older birthdays. We are in Essex which doesn't take any account of age in the 11+ and it does seem quite hard on the younger children to be competing with others who are nearly a year older. It is not just in terms of the amount of schooling that they have had but in maturity and ability to concentrate as well. In Essex it is not reaching a certain score that gets you through but being in the top 120 or so children. I'm not wingeing about it as fortunately my daughter is bright enough to be at the top of her class regardless of the fact that she is the youngest in it, it just does seem that the 11+ is slightly unfairly biased towards the older children. It would be interesting to know whether, in the average year, the successful children are evenly spread across the academic year in terms of birthdays, or whether there is a greater concentration of older children.

[solimum]

It's rather too late now for anyone reading this forum I expect, and for my August-born son who is now at UNiversity, but this fascinating report

http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications.php? ... on_id=4073

demonstrates clearly the lasting impact of birthdate on a child throughout his/her education.....

[Anne42]

That looks really interesting , though i think i shall have to print it out & read through it a bit at a time . Thanks for that .

[jazzteddy]

Hi DW, thought you may be interested to know that my sons class at CRGS, an Essex school, has quite a few younger boys and that the older ones are the minority, this may be only his class though. He is amongst the oldest in his class and I can see that he is very mature, but he may have been that way inspite of his birthdate. However, both my sons have earlier birthdays, so it could be said that age was an advantage. But I would have felt that it was unfair to undermark an older child, especially as the 3 months extra education they had at reception was spent mainly drawing, singing, doing PE etc.

[DW]

That report makes fascinating reading. It seems quite clear that summer born children are at a disadvantage when it comes to sitting tests simply because that they are younger. It makes you wonder why CSSE don't use age standardisation in scoring the 11+. I guess when all is said and done though it depends on the individual child. I have one child born at the end of July and another born at Christmas. The summer born one has always been at the top of her class and reached academic milestones ahead (age wise) of her younger, winter born sister. It's not to say she might necessarily be brighter than her sister, just that she is more willing to apply herself!

[Guest]

I suspect that whether a school uses age standardisation or not depends largely on from where they get their questions. If these come from NFER, for example, they will come from a question bank which has been trialled against many thousands of children to obtain accurate age standardisation charts. It is therefore very easy to give age standardised scores to each candidate. If a school (or consortium) set their own papers which are not nationally trialled in this way, then it is not possible to age standardise with the same degree of accuracy.

[KenR]

Hi DW

Are you sure that CSSE don't Age Standardise the results?

CSSE use NFER and there is well documented research from NFER themselves that the results from their papers need to be Age Standardised to improve the accuracy. In fact just about all 11+ exams are Age Standardised based on the original research paper by I P Schagen of NFER.

I suspect that what they mean by the top 120 in the exams, is the top 120 after Age Standardisation is applied to the raw results.

If they failed to use Age Standardisation, and I had a very young child in Essex that failed by 1 or 2 points to make the top 120, then I think I would have a very strong claim onder Age Discrimination laws let alone at Appeal!

Interestingly I know of one case in Warwickshire where a child took the 11+ exam 1 year early and passed with flying colours, possibly helped by the Age Standardisation factors. He was initially rejected for a place at a grammar because the LEA claimed he was too young but this was then accepted on Appeal.

[DW]

Hi KenR

To be honest I am only going by what has been said here on the forum. Various posters have said that Essex does not age standardise. I'd best pick up the phone and call the CSSE and check for myself!

[DW]

Me again! I've just looked at the CSSE booklet and it talks about final scores after mathematical standardisation. What could this be if it isn't age standardisation? Now I'm really confused.

[KenR]

Hi DW

I think that's exactlty what it is - Age Standardisation

If you want to know exactly what NFER do and the rationale behind it, plus the maths, then you can find a copy at the following link:-

http://apm.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/14/4/387