It's an age-old question

KAREN KELLY'S SON was just under four years old when he started pre-school at Hong Kong International School. But despite being ready academically for a challenge by the end of the school year, he wasn't ready emotionally.

The mother of five, who made a similar decision when her daughter - now a teenager - was a pre-schooler, delayed her son's entry to formal primary schooling. Now almost seven years old, he is flourishing in Grade One.

'Although he could do what he was asked to do at school he didn't really want to do it. He wasn't into the notion of going away and being away from mum.' Ms Kelly's move may boost her son's emotional and academic well-being.

The admissions season for Primary One places is now under way and most parents will be anxious their children set off on the path to formal academic learning as soon as possible. But international research suggests that they could be better off waiting.

A UK study published this year by the Higher Education Funding Council for England revealed that children born in September, at the start of the academic year, were 20 per cent more likely to go to university than their August-born peers, the youngest in their cohort. The council compared birth data from the late 1970s to early 1980s with university entry figures from 1994 to 2000.

Young Participation in Higher Education concluded that if all English children had the same chance of going to university as those born in September, there would typically be about 12,000 extra young entrants per cohort.

The study said the effect was already established by the time students progressed to A-levels.

A study of General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) results in 1991 of 500,000 teenagers showed that the oldest students in a cohort took more subjects and achieved higher grades, making September-born students 18 per cent more likely to sit an A-level in at least one subject than summer-born pupils. The pattern wasn't repeated in A-level results, however, when the playing field levelled for the autumn-born children still in the system.

Peter Hill, secretary general of the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA) that administers the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examinations, equivalent to Britain's GCSE, said the authority had not analysed the relationship between academic performance and age. This was difficult, he said, because up to 25 per cent of candidates had repeated a school year. However, Mr Hill said that he was aware of the potential effect of pushing a child into school too early, having taken part in a literacy study in 2002 of 31,000 Year One students in Catholic primary schools in Victoria, Australia. The study confirmed the 'well-known phenomenon of higher levels of performance of older students'.

The study found the difference between the oldest and youngest students wasn't large enough to change policies, as some countries had done. New Zealand, for example, staggers entry into school according to a child's fifth birthday.

The Education and Manpower Bureau uses the calendar year as the cut-off date. However, it has a flexible policy that should allow younger children in the cohort to start school when they are ready. The Education Ordinance stipulates children aged six to 12 must be enrolled in primary education. For Primary One admission, children aged five years and eight months come September 1 can be considered for admission, although this is at the discretion of parents.

Education officer Yeung King-fai said the EMB advised parents every year on the issue.

'Hong Kong parents think: What can I gain if I let my child start at a younger age? But they don't understand the disadvantageous position if their child is studying with children who are older,' he said.

Children start primary school with the English Schools' Foundation a year earlier, at age five. The ESF calculates a child's age in accordance with the EMB's December 31 cut-off date but without such explicit flexibility. And as its students ultimately compete with British students in public exams, the December-born child will be 16 months younger than the oldest in the cohort. ESF chief executive Heather Du Quesnay said she was aware of the issue. It was a matter that the ESF should look into.

Michael Wood, senior education psychologist with the ESF, said month of birth could make 'quite a difference' in of how ready children were for school. He said in a study of more than 10,000 children age five to 15 from England and Wales, the Institute of Psychiatry in London found that a higher percentage of the youngest third of children in a cohort had a psychiatric disorder, including anxiety or depression, compared with older classmates. 'It's not so much that being young causes the problem, it compounds it,' Mr Wood said.

However, Ann Coker, education officer for ESF primary schools, said differences in maturation - which can be huge from age three to five - diminished as children grew older and by the time students took the GCSE the impact of age wasn't as great. She cited the performance of ESF students in the GCSE as proof that the time of year students were born had little lasting effect. In the past two years, 92 per cent of ESF students who left Year 11 achieved at least five A* to C grades. Of the 6,257 examination entries, 51.4 per cent achieved A* or A grades.

'A good early years teacher should provide a wide range of opportunities to captivate the [child's] imagination and guide them into more formal areas of learning, not do it so soon as to give a child failure and to put them off school,' Ms Coker said.

Mr Wood emphasised schools - often strapped for places to accommodate students - should be flexible and allow younger children to repeat a year if appropriate.

Many private and international schools conduct detailed assessments of prospective students to determine individual development, instead of routinely categorising young students by age.

Clio So Chan So-ming, principal of Creative Primary School in Kowloon, said in special cases a child may repeat a year but it depended on the sensitivity of the child and parents. She added it was difficult to know when a child's development might speed up; they could lag behind in Primary One, for example, but excel in Primary Two.

Bruce Ueland, associate principal of lower primary school at Hong Kong International School, said: 'Age is really only an indicator. What we're trying to look at more is a child's actual development.'

Montessori schools teach students of different ages alongside each other - younger children learning from their older peers and the oldest students reinforcing their learning and gaining in self-esteem by helping the younger.

'Research shows that children from multi-age classrooms do as well or better in academics, self-esteem, and socialisation skills than those from single-year classrooms,' said Anne Sawyer Tesluk, co-founder of the International Montessori School of Hong Kong. 'The multi-age classroom is especially suited for gifted children, children who are at risk and those learning a second language because it offers a better match for children's uneven developmental patterns.'