Does age matter ?

[SarahLouise]

Does anyone know how much of difference the age of child makes ? I have heard of standardised scoring but in reality how much of an inpact would this have - I have a summer birthday child and I am wondering whether it is worth sitting the 11+

[KS10]

I believe it does make a difference. DS got offer from school despite not completing the paper and he was born in February. Even better is if your child has a summer birthday and is very bright. You have absolutely nothing to lose. I'm sure someone will be able to give you more factual information.

[Amber]

Oh, it matters all right (note bitter and twisted look on face here). DS born early October - missed grammar of choice by 1 mark - was told by LEA person that had he been born 3 weeks later he would be up there, above the pass mark. Grrrr. At least I was able to tell him that he had actually got more questions right than the smug little so and so in his class (July birthday) who did get in, just.

Pyrrhic victory though.

[mumbojumbo]

I'm not offering any scientific evidence, just the fact that the only one I know who got into our grammar has a June birthday. Others who tried, born earlier in the year, didn't make it. Don't know if this proves anything - the test would be to ascertain the span of birthdays of children already in the school and see if there was a bias.
Mj

[Scrumpy]

There is an article in the summer issue of "Firsteleven" written by Annabel Heseltine, which claims that children born in August are 20% LESS likely to go to Uni than a child born in Sept. This article is based on a Cambridge Assesment review released in 2009.

Makes interesting reading!

[Alex]

There was an article in the FT over a year ago saying younger children did less well:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0b055ef0-d8f2 ... ck_check=1

There was a FOI request in Lincolnshire asking for a breakdown of results by birth month over a 3 year period. The link is here but the spreadsheet gives raw data so you would need to do all the arithmetic

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/r ... xamination

On a brief glance the youngest seem fairly well represented in the highest scoring group.

[SarahLouise]

Thanks very much for your replies - reassuring and thank you for the link to the Lincolnshire information it certainly looked from that as if there is a good spread of children across the age ranges and as you say the summer born children are well represented in the higher scores as well.