Age standardisation

[bikeman]

I get the impression that Bucks gives a lot of weighting to age (esp at some counties now give none). How much weighting is given?

Is weighting for age even fair since regardless of actual birthday all year 6 students have had the same time in education. I think that the the advantage an older child has pre-school is parent/environment dependant and has little to with their extra x months on this planet.

[scary mum]

There are loads of posts on this and someone will post a link to Nfer. The children are only compared to other children born in the same month as them. No pints are added or taken away. If it is a particularly bright July cohort they may well need the same score as a September child to pass. In practice younger children tend to score lower - reflecting less time alive in which to hear vocabulary etc. My summer born chdren have had 2 terms less at school as their school had 3 intakes a year and they started the Easter before they turned 5.

[mitasol]

Links are here http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/advice ... xplanation" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
http://www.nfer.ac.uk/nfer/research/ass ... sation.cfm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

The effect is that your child is being compared with other children who are the same age in years and months.

[pippi]

The raw (RS) and standardised (SS) scores for last years tests were posted here: http://www.elevenplusexams.co.uk/forum/ ... 12&t=18356
For info I've put the extremes required to get a standardised score of 121 below (I think there may be some typos in the original tables?).

Code: Select all

                     Paper 1                   Paper 2
DOB               RS       SS               RS       SS  
01/09/99          71       121              74       121
01/08/00          65       121              70       121

In principle it is true that only children of the same age in years and months are compared directly, but in practice the groupings are larger than this in Bucks (so for example last year, children with birthdays in Feb, March and April all required the same raw score of 72 to pass Paper 2).

[scary mum]

Presumably it's not that the groups were larger, just that there was no discernible difference between them. Or we don't have enough data to tell.

[Rob Clark]

All the data supports the notion that autumn-born children have an advantage – certainly in my field of expertise (sport), there is a clear correlation between birth month and team representation at an early age, so clear in fact that you can’t possibly miss it. There is some evidence that this advantage carries through right the way into adult life so an attempt to compare summer-born children with other summer-born children rather than with those who have been in school for 11 more months (roughly 18% longer at the age of 10) seems eminently fair.

[Guest55]

I don't think any NEW research has been done on academic differences since all children started school at the same time. In the past the September borns had had more time in school - this is just not true anymore and I think a new research project should be undertaken.

[scary mum]

They will have to wait until DSs cohort go through then as his school still had 3 intakes until very recently - they went to 2 intakes about 3-4 years ago and to one ?last year. I agree that this will probably make a difference. Presumably if there is no difference standardisation won't matter one way or the other.

I have read that premiership footballers and other top sportsmen in the northern hemisphere tend to be autumn born - I don't know if it is true, but it would make sense, they would probably be bigger early on in their senior school career and more likely to be picked for teams etc.

[Rob Clark]

Yes that is true, scary mum. And in other sports too. In rugby union it is possible to make a very real comparison because in New Zealand junior teams are categorised by size and weight rather than age, and there the discrepancies around birth-month are much less pronounced.

Tennis in this country now has split seasons so new age groups are done every 6 months rather than every year and there are already early signs that this is leading to a more even spread of results as children who are young in their year during the summer season will be old in the winter season.

Apologies for the digression into sport – it’s the sole area in which I have any expert knowledge – but if physical maturity makes such a big difference it seems logical to at least ask the question whether mental maturity does too.

[heartmum]

My DC is an August born and although academically was with the Autum born peers it was the emotional development where they fell behind. This maturity (or lack of) can effect how a child copes with the pressure/test environment.

A friend, whose DC is a September born, and I had this discussion at the time of the 11+ test and I asked whether her DC would have been emotionally ready to take the test a year earlier, i.e. beginning of Y5, and she agreed her DC would not have been.

Yes you do get young Autumn borns and mature Summer borns (I have a younger Autumn born who is young for their age emotionally) however generally the emotional development comes with age development not with how long they have been at school.