A report, by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), from October 2007 and then more recently based on the GCSE results, drew on administrative data from the entire state school population in England has shown a clear gap, in terms of education results, between children born in August and those born in September.
IFS research published in October 2007 showed that, at age 7, children born in August (at the end of the
academic year) were around 25 percentage points less likely to reach the expected level at Key Stage 1 than children born in September (at the start of the academic year). This gap was smaller, but still significant, at age 16, when August-born girls were 5.5 percentage points less likely (than September-born girls) to achieve 5 GCSEs at Grades A*-C, and August-born boys were 6.1 percentage points less likely.
The results show that while 37.0% of September-born girls and 29.6% of September-born boys have started university by age 19, only 35.2% of August-born girls and 28.0% of August-born boys have started by the same age – a difference of 1.8 percentage points for girls and 1.6 percentage points for boys. Our work also shows that August-born children are significantly less likely to attend a “high status” institution than September-born children: August-born girls are 1.2 percentage points less likely (than September-born girls) to attend a “high status” university by age 19, while the difference for boys is 0.8 percentage points.
Given that a degree (particularly one from a “high status” institution) often earns its holder a substantial wage premium, these differences suggest that children born at the end of the school year may not only face lower educational opportunities, but also lower lifetime earnings, simply because of the month in which they were born.
Claire Crawford, one of the authors of the research, said “These findings underline the potentially damaging long-term education and labour market consequences faced by August-born children, simply because they were unlucky enough to be born at the end of the school year.”
Lorraine Dearden, another of the authors, said “The government is committed to widening participation in HE. If they could ensure that all children had as good a chance of going to university as those born in September, then around 2,600 more children per year would participate in HE by age 19.”
