Date of birth and achievement in GCSE and GCE A‐level

Alton, Angus; Massey, Alf

doi:10.1080/0013188980400111

Cited by 24 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…So far, because of the bulk of research on RAEs in the school context having focused on educational attainment and learning outcomes [1], explanations regarding such effects have tended to focus on ability grouping and special needs [26]. Although the ability-grouping explanation has received some empirical support recently for learning outcomes [26], it is not clear how it could account for RAEs in the case of mental health and well-being.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Suggested strategies or interventions to prevent or minimize RAEs have mainly been based on effects found for academic attainment and take one of two broad forms as follows: (1) adaptations to the school admission process and system overhauls (e.g., staggered school starting dates, children starting school on a particular birthday irrespective of the school year and month of birth based in-school grouping) and (2) interventions to increase support to reduce or prevent the disadvantage faced by younger individuals in any given cohort (e.g., use of age-standardized tests, increased RAE awareness among teachers and educational psychologists, monitoring referral rates to psychiatric units etc.) [33,34].…”

Section: Implications and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Extent and Specificity of Relative Age Effects on Mental Health and Functioning in Early Adolescence

Patalay

Belsky

Fonagy

et al. 2015

Journal of Adolescent Health

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implications and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Extent and Specificity of Relative Age Effects on Mental Health and Functioning in Early Adolescence

Patalay

Belsky

Fonagy

et al. 2015

Journal of Adolescent Health

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“…In England, where the academic year runs from September 1st to August 31st, this means that children who are born in the autumn tend to outperform those who are born in the summer (e.g. Russell and Startup (1986), Sharp et al (1994), Thomas (1995) and Alton and Massey (1998)).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Drivers of Month-of-Birth Differences in Children’s Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills

Crawford

Dearden

Greaves

2014

Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A: Statistics in Society

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Previous research has found that children who are born later in the academic year have lower educational attainment, on average, than children who are born earlier in the year, especially at younger ages; much less is known about the mechanisms that drive this inequality. The paper uses two complementary identification strategies to estimate an upper bound of the effect of age at test by using rich data from two UK birth cohorts. We find that differences in the age at which cognitive skills are tested accounts for the vast majority of the difference in these outcomes between children who are born at different times of the year, whereas the combined effect of the other factors (age of starting school, length of schooling and relative age) is close to zero. This suggests that applying an age adjustment to national achievement test scores may be an appropriate policy response to overcome the penalty that is associated with being born later in the academic year. Age at test does not, however, explain all of the difference in children's view of their own scholastic competence. Age adjusting national achievement test scores may help to overcome differences in ability beliefs between children who are born at different times of the year, but our results suggest that additional policy responses may be required.

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“…A multiplicity of statistical analyses with large effects (Gladwell, 2008) in academic environments (Alton & Massey, 1998;Bedard & Dhuey, 2006) and sports (Edwards, 1994;Schorer, Wattie, & Baker, 2013) show a relative age effect (RAE) which is most likely due to the fact that children and adolescents are divided into age groups according to birth dates. For this division, there has to be a cut-off date, for example, the 1st of January.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

Coaches’ implicit associations between size and giftedness: implications for the relative age effect

Furley

Memmert

2015

Journal of Sports Sciences

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The relative age effect (RAE) is a well-established phenomenon in education and sports. Coaches have been assumed to be important social agents of RAE via biased selection decisions in favour of children with maturation advantages. In the present research, we used the Implicit Association Test to investigate automatic associations between body size and a player's domain-specific giftedness amongst youth baseball (N = 18) and youth soccer coaches (N = 34). We found medium to strong automatic associations between body size and player giftedness (baseball: MD = 0.62; soccer: MD = 0.51). Specifically, taller players were associated with positive performance-related attributes, whereas smaller players were associated with negative attributes. The results are in line with theories of grounded cognition by showing that the abstract concept of "sport giftedness" is partly grounded in the perception of physical height amongst youth sports coaches. We argue that this grounded cognition has the potential to influence coaches' selection decisions and in turn account for RAE as coaches are biased towards physically more matured players, even when no apparent performance advantage is evident.

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Date of birth and achievement in GCSE and GCE A‐level

Cited by 24 publications

References 4 publications

The Extent and Specificity of Relative Age Effects on Mental Health and Functioning in Early Adolescence

The Extent and Specificity of Relative Age Effects on Mental Health and Functioning in Early Adolescence

The Drivers of Month-of-Birth Differences in Children’s Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Skills

Coaches’ implicit associations between size and giftedness: implications for the relative age effect

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