Samantha Dainty of Bespoke Minds Education explores the conundrum of having a summer-born baby and what you can do to help your child achieve success
Words by Samantha Dainty
When my daughter was delivered by emergency c-section on 1 September 2023, a midwife remarked, with a wry smile, that my daughter was clearly going to be competitive as she wanted to be the oldest in the year. Friends and acquaintances also joked about her being ?a teacher?s baby?.
While their comments were made in good humour, they reveal much about the real and perceived disadvantages that are attributed to babies born with a summer birthday.
When it comes to education, parents naturally want to give their children the best possible start. However, for parents of summer-born children, they are unique. August-born children, being up to 20 per cent younger than the oldest in their class, face significant challenges in academic attainment compared to their September-born counterparts. At age seven, August-born pupils are 26 per cent less likely to achieve the government’s expected level than September-born pupils, a disparity that persists at ages 11 and 16, with differences of 13 per cent and 6.4 per cent, respectively (Crawford et al., 2013). Quantifying the impact, the Department for Education estimates that approximately 10,000 summer-born children each year fail to achieve five A*-C grades at GCSE solely due to their birth month, highlighting the profound effect of timing on educational outco...