According to recent research, there are a whole bunch of benefits to being one of the oldest kids in the class. The study, published in the National Bureau of Economic Research, discovered that September kids tended to be the smartest. The study was titled ‘School Starting Age and Cognitive Development’ and showed signs that the smartest and most sensible children were born early on in the school year.
After studying 1.2 million public school students between the ages of six and fifteen to assess their cognitive development, the Bureau found that children born in September had a higher score average than the children born in August. This is significant because August children are the youngest in a US school year, and children born in September are the oldest.
It proves that while August children might lag behind as a result of being the youngest in the class, September kids will excel. As the children grew older and their yearly average scores increased, September children came out on top. Their scores often meant they had an advantage over other children in getting into the best higher education institutions.
Other factors were taken into account during the study, including ethnicity and parental economic backgrounds. There wasn’t much evidence to suggest that these factors had much impact on the study. However, the researchers did notice that a low performing student could catch up before important testing comes up in later life, no matter what their background was.
This was usually aided by the child being kept back a year in their formal education, extra tuition outside of school and additional special programmes in helping to fail children. This could suggest that a family with more money, who is better able to support their child’s education, may be more likely to have a child that succeeds in the long run.
The same researchers also looked into detention centers for children in Florida to see whether they provided any significant results. It was found that children born in September were much less likely to get into trouble and end up in detention centers.
This proves that not only are the children more likely to have collegiate success, but they’re also more inclined to make sensible decisions and avoid involvement in a juvenile crime. This may just be due to the edge in maturity they have, but either way, it shows integrity from the September born kids.
