More Research

It was very interesting to find a report written on the website education.gov.uk. This was written in 2009. In particular i have looked at satistics written about the acheivements of children born in the different seasons in the year and how it effects them accidemically. I have taken parts of the document which i find interesting and feel that other people also working with children would find it pariculary interesting too.
Here is the link to the document for anyone to have a closer look at and see if this helps them with there inquiry:
https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/DFE-RR017.pdf

"In contrast to their lower attainment, summer-born children have better behavioural outcomes, with lower rates of overall and persistent absence, fewer fixed period exclusions, and slightly fewer permanent exclusions. Two national surveys suggest that being summer-born is linked to a slightly greater risk of being bullied. TellUs data suggest that August-born young people are 6 percentage points more likely to be bullied than those born in September in years 6 and 8, falling to 5 percentage points in year 10. LSYPE data indicate that summer-born pupils have a higher incidence of suffering extreme (and rare) levels of bullying. Summer-born pupils are also significantly more likely to be identified as having a special educational need than their older classmates. At the end of Key Stage 1, August-born pupils are nearly 90% more likely to be identified with SEN than September-born pupils; at Key Stage 2, this reduces to 60% more likely, and further to 25% more likely by Key Stage 4. The types of special educational need most disproportionate in summer-born pupils are moderate learning difficulties, specific learning difficulties, speech, language and communications needs, and other (unclassified) needs. New analysis for this paper reveals that month of birth also shows consistent effects on attitudes to school and higher education, with younger children and their parents reporting less satisfaction and tending to rate their outcomes as average rather than good. "

"September entrants to reception perform better across the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile than those who enter in January, who in turn do better than summer-term entrants; this is the case regardless of month of birth. The strongest association with term of entry is for the Communication, Language and Literacy scales. This effect is likely to include a component of selection with less able children more likely to enter in the spring or summer terms. "

Shifting the focus from those achieving a good level of development to the lowest achieving pupils nationally, the bottom fifth of pupils was disproportionately made up of Summer-born children. Fig. 1.1d shows that nearly half (49%) of the lowest achieving 20% were born in the summer (May-August), whereas only 20% of this group were born in the autumn (September-December).  

"Girls were more likely than boys to achieve a good level of development, and pupils who were not eligible for free school meals were more likely than those who were eligible. The term of birth effect was larger for pupils not eligible for free schools meals amongst girls, but larger for those who were eligible amongst boys. "


"The odds ratio on Key Stage 2 English and maths combined at the expected level for September compared with August-born pupils was 1.9 (Fig. 1.1k). Just 43% of August-born FSM boys achieve level 4 in English and maths compared with 84% of September-born non-FSM girls"

To put this in context, 10,000 summer-born children per year fail to achieve this standard at GCSE, which influences their chances of progressing to A-levels and beyond, purely because they are the youngest pupils sitting the GCSE examinations due to the timing of their birth and the school year.

 

(all information and statistics taken from education.gov.uk)