# The Right Age to Start School

IELTS Academic Reading - 14 questions - 20 minutes - Matching features, Yes / No / Not Given, Matching sentence endings

Source: Written by Testmigo.

## The passage

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on the passage below.

Every school system must decide when children become old enough to begin. In England, most children join a reception class in the September after their fourth birthday, although the law does not require full-time education until the start of the term after they turn five. Finland waits far longer: compulsory education generally begins in the year a child turns seven, preceded by a year of pre-primary education that has been compulsory since 2015. It is tempting to assume that one of these approaches must be right. I think that assumption is mistaken, but not because the timing is unimportant. The research suggests that it matters a great deal, only not in the way the usual debate implies.

The clearest finding concerns a child's age relative to classmates, not a nation's starting age. Because most systems admit each year group by a single cut-off date, the oldest children in a class are roughly 20 per cent older at entry than the youngest. In 2006 the economists Kelly Bedard and Elizabeth Dhuey examined test results from OECD countries and found that the youngest pupils in each cohort scored between 4 and 12 percentiles below the oldest in the fourth grade, and 2 to 9 percentiles below them in the eighth. In Canada and the United States, the youngest were even less likely to go on to university. The gap narrows with time, but it does not quietly vanish.

A more troubling consequence was reported in 2018 by Timothy Layton and colleagues at Harvard Medical School, using insurance records for 407,846 American children. In states where a child had to be five by 1 September to enter kindergarten, which makes August-born children the youngest in their class, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) was diagnosed in 85.1 of every 10,000 August-born children, against 63.6 among those born in September. August-born children were also more often treated, and no comparable gap appeared in states with other cut-off dates. The most plausible explanation is uncomfortable: behaviour that is normal for the youngest child in a room is being read as a disorder.

The obvious remedy for these problems is to give some children more time, and some of the strongest evidence for it comes from Denmark, where children are expected to enter kindergarten in the calendar year in which they turn six. Thomas Dee and Hans Henrik Sievertsen used exact dates of birth to compare children on either side of that rule. A one-year delay produced a large reduction in inattention and hyperactivity at seven, a measure of self-regulation closely tied to later achievement. The effect was identified mainly among girls, but it was still present at eleven. This matters, in my view: extra time does not merely hand children an early lead that soon fades; it strengthens a capacity on which later learning depends.

Yet older is not automatically better. Studying the whole population of Norway, Sandra Black, Paul Devereux and Kjell Salvanes separated starting age from age when tested, using IQ tests taken at military enrolment, around the age of eighteen. Starting school younger had a small positive effect on IQ, while age at the time of the test had a much larger one. Starting younger also made teenage pregnancy more likely, but had little effect on how much education people completed. Early starters earned more at first, probably because they had entered the workforce sooner, yet by thirty that advantage had essentially disappeared. Some of the apparent benefit of being older, then, is an artefact of measuring children at different ages.

Reading offers a further warning against haste. Sebastian Suggate, Elizabeth Schaughency and Elaine Reese studied 287 New Zealand children. In state schools, children began school and formal reading lessons on their fifth birthday; in Steiner schools, reading instruction began at about seven. The earlier group was ahead at first in naming letters and reading words, but by the age of eleven the difference had gone. A second comparison, of 83 older pupils, found similar fluency in both groups, while the later starters generally showed greater comprehension. The design was not experimental, so I would not claim it proves waiting is superior. It does, however, weaken the fear that late readers stay permanently behind.

None of this means that parents should simply decide for themselves. In the United States, delaying a child's entry to kindergarten is called 'redshirting', and in 2013 Daphna Bassok and Sean Reardon estimated that 4 to 5.5 per cent of children are held back. Boys, White children and those from families of higher socio-economic status were the most likely to wait, and there was no sign that children with weaker abilities at four were held back more often. Parents, it seems, worry less about readiness than about their child's position within the class. Left to families who can afford another year of care, delay does not remove the disadvantage of being youngest; it passes it to someone else.

England offers a partial model. Children born between 1 April and 31 August, known there as summer-born, need not start school until the September after their fifth birthday, and parents may ask for such a child to join reception rather than year 1, although the admission authority makes the final decision and may refuse. A sensible policy, I would argue, builds on that flexibility but bases decisions on a child's development rather than a family's means, and asks teachers and doctors to judge young children against others of the same age, not merely the same class. Moving everyone's start date later would not achieve this, since a class that begins at seven still has a youngest member. What matters most is how schools treat the children who are youngest when they arrive.

## Questions

### Questions 27-31: Matching features

Look at the following findings (Questions 27-31) and the list of researchers below. Match each finding with the correct researcher or researchers, A-E. NB You may use any letter more than once.

- **A** Bedard and Dhuey
- **B** Layton and colleagues
- **C** Dee and Sievertsen
- **D** Black, Devereux and Salvanes
- **E** Suggate, Schaughency and Reese

27. Those who began their education at a younger age were more likely to become parents while still in their teens.

28. A benefit of postponing school entry was observed chiefly in one sex.

29. Children who were among the youngest in their year group were less likely to continue into higher education.

30. How old people were when assessed proved more influential than how old they were when they started school.

31. Children in the same school year were more often identified as having a behavioural condition if they were born just before the cut-off date.

### Questions 32-36: Yes / No / Not Given

Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer? Choose YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer, NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer, or NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this.

32. The wide variation in national starting ages suggests that the timing of school entry makes little difference.

33. The Danish research indicates that the advantages of a later start may be more than temporary.

34. Some of the gains linked to being older are a by-product of the point at which children are assessed.

35. Children who are taught to read at five are likely to lose interest in reading as they grow older.

36. The fairest approach would be to let parents alone decide when their child starts school.

### Questions 37-40: Matching sentence endings

Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-G, below.

- **A** began formal reading lessons on their fifth birthday.
- **B** must complete a year of pre-primary education.
- **C** tend to have weaker abilities than their classmates at the age of four.
- **D** eventually understood texts at least as well as those taught earlier.
- **E** are disproportionately male and from more advantaged homes.
- **F** must send the child to school in the September after the child turns four.
- **G** can ask for a place in reception but may not be given one.

37. Before starting compulsory education in Finland, children

38. In the New Zealand study, the children whose reading lessons started at about seven

39. American children whose entry to kindergarten is delayed

40. In England, parents of a child born in the summer

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