Why do summer babies do worse in exams? With a focus on Parental Expectations.

Introduction:
There is speculation that being the youngest in your class cannot only impact your attainment
at school but also your self-belief, employment prospects and wages. The IFS (2007) found
evidence to suggest that children who are the youngest in their class do achieve worse
academically. Many parents have their own views on this, some of them agreeing and some
giving examples of their young children who are not affected (Fisher, 2011). This is a
sensitive topic that interests a lot of parents with their child being the oldest or youngest in
the class. I want to investigate if there is any conclusive evidence either way and add to the
research that already exists in this area. There is limited evidence to back up the IFS (2011)
study and even less research has been conducted into the reason why younger children might
be performing worse. Another purpose for conducting this research is the implications for this
in educational practice. If it is found that August babies are underachieving because of their
age in relation to other children in their year, then there may be a simple solution to avoid this
inequality continuing to exist in our education system. I also want this study to lead onto
further research into why children born in August have the potential to fall behind their peers.
Is it really their age or does it involve their teachers/parents expectations be a factor in
causing the childrens attainment at school to be lower. Many parents have their minds made
up on whether the positioning of their child in the year will cause them to be at a
disadvantage or not and can often be bitter when their child has to start school having only
just turned five, feeling like they are not yet ready. The parents expectations for their childs
attainment, whether intentionally expressed or not can impact the childs attainment through
self-fulfilling prophesy as demonstrated by Rosenthal and Jacobs (1968 ). I want to see if
this is one of the factors that causes the child to under achieve and not the age itself.

Hypotheses:
In my study parental attitudes is the independent variable and child attainment is the
dependant variable.
Experimental Hypothesis: The lower expectations parents with summer babies have lowers
their childrens attainment.
Null: Parental views have no effect on their childrens attainment.
The expectation is that parents whose children are the youngest in the class will be more
likely to expect their child to underperform and their child will achieve lower than their older
peers.

Literature Review
Research often finds a correlation between attainment in school and birth month, however
there is limited research into the reasons why this may be the case.
For example Bedard and Dhuey (2006) found that even a child that is only one month older
can statistically achieve higher in maths and science test scores and Dhuey and Lipscombe
(2006) found that older children are up to 11% more likely to become a sports team captain or
club president in high school which will give them the leadership experience to be more
likely to achieve a managerial position in a job than their peers with a low age in their school
year. However IFS point out that the gaps in attainment lessen as children move through
school, and where the gap in attainment becomes less and less significant and there is other

evidence to show that there is no significant hindrance of birthdate and achievement in

school.
However Gledhill, Form and Goodman (2002) found that that that the reading and spelling
ability of august babies was not hindered by their age but teachers were more likely to
assume that their attainment would be lower. I am therefore going to look into how childrens
abilities could be affected by their parents opinions and attitudes towards their birthday in
relation to the year they started school.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS, 2007) concluded that the main factor that was effecting
childrens performance in school was the age the children are when taking the test however I
am going to investigate whether there are other factors that are more likely to be causing
these results.
Sampling Method:
I will use matched pairs sampling to gain a representative sample of the population with a
particular focus in mind. I have chosen this sampling method because it allows me to reduce
the impact of extraneous variables on my results and allows more valid comparisons to be
made. I will only include children born in specific months from primary schools in my
research and I will select my sample from the National Pupil Database where I will have
access to childrens dates of birth.
To counteract extraneous variables, I will match the children on certain criteria. Social class
has an effect on attainment and it is an extraneous variable. I will prevent this from becoming
a confounding variable by ensuring that there are an equal number of children sampled from
schools in middle class and disadvantaged areas and match them. Gender and ethnicity also
effect childrens attainment and therefore, where possible I will also match same sex and

ethnic background to eliminate these extraneous variables. There will be two experimental
groups (babies born in August and September) and a control group (babies born in March). I
will look at babies born in March because they not affected by the school cut off and this
provides a control group to compare my results to which willl improve the reliability of my
experiment.
I will decide on the size of my sample when I know how much my budget will allow for. I
would aim to be sponsored so that I would have enough money to include as many children
in the UK born in the months selected for my study as possible to account for inevitable
reduction in response rates and improve the reliability and validity of the results. I will then
send a consent form asking permission for the parents and children in the family that suit the
criteria to take part in my study with a small incentive and a questionnaire for the child and
adult to fill in.
Due to the purposive aspect of this sampling method there is a risk of researcher bias and
therefore the results could lack generalizability. Matched pairs helps to eliminate any
extraneous variables however there is a risk that the sample will not provide me with the data
I need to collect. Although matched pairs is useful for eliminating extraneous variables, it is
time consuming and there is a risk of the sample being limited by the amount of matches that
will actually be able to be made. Despite this, the advantages of this method outweigh the
disadvantages and therefore this is a suitable sampling method for my study.

Methodology
I will used mixed methods to carry out research with a variety of different data collection
instruments to gain both quantitative and qualitative data. I will also collect a both primary
and secondary data.

In my study I will collect quantitative numerical data which is easier to draw empirical
conclusions from and allows the analysis to be methodical. Quantitative data is also more
objective than qualitative data and therefore collecting this form of data will make my
research more valid. I will use the National Pupil Database (2014) to collect information on
gender, date of birth and attainment of pupils in mathematics, English and science. These will
be the statistics I use to find out if there is a difference in attainment of pupils based on how
old they are in the year.
I will then send two different questionnaires out to the participating parents and children. The
purpose of this is to collect quantitative data and to assess whether the parents and children
will be suitable for the second stage of my research which will involve interviews. They will
have to fulfil certain criteria according to their attitudes and beliefs to be suitable. There will
be both closed and open questions and some of the closed questions will include a Likert
scale to measure the extent to which they feel certain aspects apply to them. The open
questions will give an opportunity to start collecting qualitative data and for the participants
to express themselves in more detail. This detail will help me to gain a fuller understanding of
the independent variable and give me more background to assessing whether my hypotheses
has been supported by the study.
The questionnaire for the parent will include questions inspired by Gorard, See and Davies
(2012) who wrote a report on the impact of parental expectations on attainment. I will include
questions that ask about the parents views of their childs potential in relation to their relative
age in their class, their attitudes towards the possible impact the position of their childs
schooling has had on their attainment and their involvement in their childs school life. The
childs questionnaire will involve questions about their motivation, attitudes, aspirations and
self-esteem. These questions will be made suitable for the age group they are aimed at
(primary school age). A disadvantage of these questionnaires is that they are topics which

involve a lot of ambiguity and subjectivity and this needs to be taken into account when the
results are being analysed. Another disadvantage of a questionnaire is that people may
misunderstand the questions asked. I will counteract this by conducting I pilot survey. This
will be a survey sent to a smaller sample which I will use solely for the purpose of checking
how well understood the questions in the questionnaire are. However questionnaires are less
time consuming than interviews and allow vast amounts of data to be collected and analysed
easily.
I will then find adults who have particularly strong views about the age of their child in the
class and particularly high or low expectations and also look at children who have
particularly low self-esteem so that I can invite them to interview. The interview process
gives a chance for further discussion of the answers written in the questionnaire to clarify
ambiguities. A potential disadvantage of the interview process is observer bias however this
can be reduced through the discussions being recorded and re-interpreted by another observer
to provide inter-observer reliability.
This process will allow me to collect data which I can use to analyse in depth the relationship
between parents expectations and attainment. I need to be careful when making conclusions
about cause and effect because attainment is a complex subject that has many more factors
that affect it than I have controlled. There are also many factors that affect a parents
expectations for their children that I have not taken into account in this study that could
impact my results and make them less reliable. Therefore it is important that I assess in depth
the extent to which my independent and dependant variables are associated to confirm that it
was the expectations that caused the differences in attainment and not the other reeasons.

Problems and Ethical Issues:

There are a number of issues I could encounter whilst carrying out this research. It could be
hard to find people who are willing to give private information about their expectations of
their children and their feelings towards potential inequalities that their child is facing in the
classroom because these are personal issues. This could also provoke people to be dishonest
when completing the survey.
I also need to consider various ethical issues to ensure that my study complies with the
standards set by the British Educational Research Association (2011) guidelines. This is to
ensure that no psychological harm is caused to the participants. The most important aspect is
to respect the participants confidentiality and right to withdraw. Participants should be aware
that any personal information will be protected by the Data Protection Act (2003) and also
that they have the right to choose to withdraw at any point during the study. I must also make
sure that my participants give informed consent to avoid deception and that they have a full
debrief after the experiment is completed.
Also, because I am dealing with primary school aged children, parents must consent to their
taking part and I must take extra care when dealing them and their information as they are
considered a vulnerable group and it is important that I do not cause any unnecessary distress
during the experiment.