11 Plus Exams Forum

Article in the Telegraph

link

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/40 ... ldren.html

The article is sketchy in terms of detail.

Don't know about that - most of my friends at grammar school had birthdays around the same time as me (July) and DS has just passed his 11+ (July birthday). Maybe there are just more children born in the Autumn - 9 months after Christmas/New Year ?

Yes I thought the article was poor -

Every year I do a thing about month of birth in lessons and we collect data so I have years of it - no evidence in Bucks of this ....

andyb wrote:Maybe there are just more children born in the Autumn - 9 months after Christmas/New Year ?

I wonder if more kids are actually born in the Autumn. I know that if I wanted another child I'd definitely plan for an October birth so they were one of the oldest in their year group.

The one in the FT may be more to your liking:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0b055ef0-d8f2 ... ck_check=1
It's even got an interactive map with all the data!
In Bucks it looks like there is a small "bias" in favour of older children - perhaps that could come from the appeals system?
Apparently some areas don't adjust for age at all:

Elizabeth Ward, chairman of the Consortium of Selective Schools in Essex, said: "As is the case with many other tests of academic ability in this country including public examinations, the scores achieved in the selection test administered by the Consortium are not adjusted for the age of the candidate."

Hello everyone

Just to add my pennies worth. My son is Aug born and passed the 11+ and my daughter is July and has recently passed. Most of my dd's close friends who are older (three are Autumn born) didn't pass so not sure if I belive that.

Mel

PS

Happy new year everyone

A far better article than the one in the Telegraph Pippi - thank you for posting it.

pippi wrote:In Bucks it looks like there is a small "bias" in favour of older children - perhaps that could come from the appeals system?

I think this is unlikely, given the number of successful appeal cases each year. They wouldn't account for the difference county-wide.

Bucks appeal panels do recognise the disadvantage of a late birthday and the relative immaturity that accompanies it, and if anything, I would expect the success rate of appeals for late birthdays to be slightly higher.

In Bucks I think the bias towards older children has more to do with the youngest children starting school two terms later, and thus having less incremental learning by the time of the 11+. I am glad that many schools are now abandoning the idea.

Nationally the picture will definitely be skewed by all the areas where the 11+ is not age-standardised.

I have also just noticed that only 8/12 Bucks Grammars are included on the list - BHS, BGS, SWB and RLS are all missing. They should all be there, because they all have more than 90 pupils in the 6th form.

Among the Upper Schools, Chalfonts Community College is missing, and the only FE college included is Amersham and Wycombe.

As the FT claims to have analyzed the numbers from all English schools, perhaps the missing schools didn't prove the case quite so well?

Sally-Anne, you cynic!

To be fair to The Telegraph, they are only getting the information second hand, presumably from a standard press release, whereas since the FT sponsored the research they have access to the full report and can hence cover it in more depth.

Surely all children (and adults!!?) mature at a different rate, it’s difficult to legislate for that. Both my two are summer born and I’d actually say DD was more mature than DS in most ways – just not in 11+ terms, obviously!!

Some independents have two sets of entrance exams:

Sept-Feb birthdays have an entrance test in October and are offered places or rejected by December and then Mar-Aug birthdays have an entrance test in late June and told of the outcome in July.

I don't know if that's fairer or if it makes no difference at all.