Preface

It was some time ago now that I was a class teacher in a school where the register was in birth order from September to August. I couldn’t help noticing a slender correlation between the birth dates of the children and their seeming academic standing in the class. In those days I simply logged the pattern with a mild form of interest and focused back on the teaching. However in recent years the drive to raise standards for every group of children within a given school means that data has poured into schools at a frightening rate and the issue of the “Summer Born” children has become a major aspect of the debate.

The “Summer-Born” Achievement Gap

The correlation I spotted anecdotally all those years ago has become an incontestable piece of statistical data and the issue of raising standards amongst “Summer Born” children has become high stakes within the system. Raise online now includes data for children born in each of the three terms in the academic year allowing schools to determine if the summer-born are making less progress than their peers. The issue was brought to a head recently with the publication of a document from the Institute for Fiscal Studies entitled “When you are born matters: evidence for England” They determined that those born in in the latter stages of the academic year are 5.4% more likely to be on the SEN register at age 11, 6.4% less likely to achieve 5 GCSE at grades A-C, 2% less likely to go to university and 1% less likely to graduate without a degree. Indeed some of their graphs show a frightening correlation:

The report hit the headlines not for its data which is generally well attested to in educational circles but for their rather radical proposal that there should be a weighting principle when calculating exam related scores. They recommend that all national achievement scores should be “age adjusted” to ensure that “those born towards the end of the academic year are not disadvantaged by taking the tests younger” It is an interesting solution to the problem and has promoted a lot of debate but I fear there may be another more simple resolution that actually hits at the heart of all teaching and learning in schools and will therefore benefit all children whatever their age or ability.

Whilst the evidence is clear that the summer born appear to struggle to achieve the truth is that the gap narrows as children get older. The graphs appear to show an alarming correlation between age and achievement and allude to the fact that there is a debate to be had but they also demonstrate the closing of the gap over time. The statistics presented above showing a diminishing number of percentage points difference as children get older. This is not to conclude that there is not an issue to be addressed it is simply to state the obvious fact that when a child born in August lands in a reception class at the age of 4 with a child who is just on the cusp of their 5th birthday, the age gap is more marked. A whole year separates them by more importantly the older child has been on the planet 20% longer than his younger classmate. By the time both children leave university at the age of 22 the older child has only spent 4.6% longer, thus producing a tailing off effect as age increases. The report itself acknowledged that the trend does not continue into adulthood. The Institute for Fiscal Studies wanted to use this time lag as a statistical basis for adjusting scores but as intimated earlier learning is too complex to reduce down to bald statistics. However I always take a somewhat more simplistic stance and believe that the best place to find answers to issues of Teaching and Learning is in pedagogy not in statistical or data adjustment (although this might have a place in some instances)

Resolving the “Summer-Born” Achievement Gap

It would be hard to argue against the simplistic argument of “time spent on the planet” as being a contributing factor and in truth few would deny this is a contributing cause but are there other reasons which would allow us to be more pro-active in our response rather than simply rolling over and giving into the fact that a date of birth condemns a child to a life of underachievement

The Outliers

Month / Players
January / 51
February / 46
March / 61
April / 49
May / 46
June / 49
July / 36
August / 41
September / 36
October / 34
November / 33
December / 30
Source: ESPN The NHL 2008 Season

A starting point might be to look at Malcolm Gladwell’s startling finding in his book “The Outliers”. Whilst at a “hockey game” (an ice hockey match, to those this side of the Atlantic) Gladwell noticed an interesting pattern in the birthdates of the players. The majority of them were born in the early months of the year. Indeed upon further investigation this trend continued with a seeming relatively strong correlation between the months of the year and the number of players in the NHL. Realising that this was either an incidence of high level co-incidence or a definable pattern he looked into other sports. He noted the players in the Premier League in England had a similar pattern except that their “Golden” month was September and the numbers then declined throughout the year to August.

This second correlation provided Gladwell with the insight he needed to propose an underlying reason for the trend. In the US and Canada, the cut off for eligibility for the junior hockey leagues is January 1st. The implication of this is that when the teams are chosen, those born in September have one unique and obvious advantage over those born later on in the year – they are older! In the case of the under 8 team, the child born on January 1st is not only almost a whole year older than a child born on 31st December but he has also lived nearly 12% longer. He will in general terms be stronger, taller and possibly more co-ordinated than his August born peer. The same principle transfers itself seamlessly into the Premier League in England where the cut-off date for eligibility is September 1st. No surprise to find therefore that the upper echelons of football in the UK are dominated by players born in the autumn.

So how does it work? The coaches of the local teams assess the ability of the children that come to the open training sessions. From there they select those demonstrating the most potential and those that exhibit the early signs of a budding talent. As Gladwell notes most of these will, by definition, be the older children simply due to the fact that their age provides them with a greater opportunity to shine. They are then put in the team and start to play competitive matches, at times they are drawn away from the main squad for elite training and so the gap between the two groups widens and those spotted early are given additional opportunities to foster their natural talent.

Academics have called this principle the “relative-age effect” as they have come to recognise that an initial advantage attributable to age gets turned into a more profound advantage over time. It is similar to the infamous “Matthew effect”, based on the verse from the New Testament, “For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.” (Matthew 25:29) The principle underlying this is that those who are deemed to have a natural talent progress at a greater rate simply by virtue of the fact that additional opportunities are opened up to them.

The tragedy of the “relative-age effect” is that the differentiation of both perceived ability and therefore provision for the groups of children is based on something as spurious as their date of birth. It is not difficult to see how this applies directly to the “Summer Born” debate. Those who come to school born in September are nearing their fifth birthday; some of those they are taught alongside will have just turned four in the previous month. The teacher receives the children and notes, rightly to a certain extent, that some of the children appear somewhat more advanced in certain areas of the curriculum and she obviously wishes to differentiate for their needs. It doesn’t take a huge leap of imagination to work out that many of these will be the September born as they have spent nearly 20% more time living and learning than some of their peers. The groups are therefore distilled throughout the academic year and those children deemed more able are given a level of academic provision that only reinforces the divide between them and their peers.

If the “relative-age effect” was the only principle at work in the classroom all might be relatively fine and easy to adjust, however the situation is compounded by the “Pygmalion effect” an older and yet still highly significant piece of research from the 1960’s.

The Pygmalion Effect

In 1965 Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson undertook a seminal study looking at the role of teacher expectation on the attainment of children. Both men had spent years in education and both had become convinced that teacher’s low expectation of children, especially those in socio-economically deprived areas, were contributing to the high failure rate amongst students. They therefore undertook a simple experiment. Working in a predominantly lower-class school they informed the teachers that they were running a test on the children that they entitled "The Harvard Test of Inflected Acquisition." They told the school that the test would not only determine the child’s IQ but would also be able to identify those children who were in a position to make rapid and above average progress. At the start of the year the teachers were given the names of the children that the test had concluded would make additional progress within that year. In reality the test measured no such thing and the names of the children were simply a sample taken at random by the two researchers.

However at the end of the year the children were retested on their IQ. Those in the “rapid progress” groups made 50% more progress than those in the “normal” groups showing an average rise of 12 points compared with the 8 points progress of their peers. The results were more pronounced in the younger children where the infant children showed an increase of over 20 points or more. Equally as interesting were the subjective elements of the research. The teacher assessments, such as the reading grades, followed a similar pattern. The teachers also shared that they found the “special” students were better behaved, more engaged in the learning and were generally more amenable and friendly than their counterparts

Rosenthal and Jacobson concluded that a self-fulfilling prophecy had occurred and that the expectations of the teachers had subtly and sub-consciously impacted greatly on the learning and attainment of the students. In short the expectation had become the main driver and the key factor in determining the progress made by each child.

There is a dramatic anecdotal story that has been told in educational circles for many years. It may fall into the category of an urban myth but Christina Hoff Sommers, quotes it in her book “The War Against Boys” and claims in her end notes that it is a story told by Dr Carl Boyd. The story runs that a well-respected teacher, Mrs Daughty, taught in one of the Chicago schools and that one year she found her sixth grade class difficult to handle and drew the conclusion that many of them must have special educational needs. One evening she was working late at the school and went into the school office looking up the file where the IQ scores were held. To her astonishment she found that the majority of her students were way above average in intelligence, many having IQ scores in the 120’s and 130’s and one child an IQ of 145. Concluding that the issue with the class was that the work they had undertaken lacked challenge and their poor behaviour was a consequence of that, she determined to raise the challenge of the work and set higher expectations throughout the class as a whole. By the end of the year the children had outperformed any previous year group and became noted in the school for their good behaviour. The principal was keen to know the secret of the teacher’s success and after she confided in him that she had taken a sneak preview of their IQ scores. He felt under obligation to inform her that the numbers were not their IQ scores but their locker numbers!

Whether the story is true or not we may never be sure but either way it demonstrates, in narrative form, the reality of the “Pygmalion Effect” and the fact that a teacher’s expectation of a class or even of an individual child has a huge impact on their social, emotional and academic progress.