MARKakaJIM
Contrary Mary
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2010
- Messages
- 24,546
- Reaction score
- 3,400
It's something that has no real solution in my eyes, no matter when you set the cut off or give a window of flexibility to there's always going to be someone just outside of the boundaries feeling aggrieved.
From personal experience I can't really say that I've noticed the relative age difference have any real bearing, I was one of the youngest at my Primary school I think, certainly the youngest of my friends who all fall Sept-Dec whereas I'm late April, the eldest of us had shocking handwriting at the start of Primary school and even now 20+ years later it's still almost identically bad! When I got to secondary school there were more kids younger than me in the year but one of them got some of the best GCSE/A level grades in our year group and now has a decent job on the back of his degree.
I don't remember thinking much about the age gap during school actually so perhaps it's more of a thing for the parents to concern themselves with, perhaps unnecessarily at times, rather than anything that's going to worry the kids themselves. Even then there was a kid in our year who was the youngest he could possibly be, 31st August, and another lad we met playing football from another school the eldest possible, 1st September, and it didn't make the slightest bit of difference, neither had any application in school and neither have gone on to do anything of note since either. I think there are far more important factors in determining the success of someone's education than when in the year they were born personally.
From personal experience I can't really say that I've noticed the relative age difference have any real bearing, I was one of the youngest at my Primary school I think, certainly the youngest of my friends who all fall Sept-Dec whereas I'm late April, the eldest of us had shocking handwriting at the start of Primary school and even now 20+ years later it's still almost identically bad! When I got to secondary school there were more kids younger than me in the year but one of them got some of the best GCSE/A level grades in our year group and now has a decent job on the back of his degree.
I don't remember thinking much about the age gap during school actually so perhaps it's more of a thing for the parents to concern themselves with, perhaps unnecessarily at times, rather than anything that's going to worry the kids themselves. Even then there was a kid in our year who was the youngest he could possibly be, 31st August, and another lad we met playing football from another school the eldest possible, 1st September, and it didn't make the slightest bit of difference, neither had any application in school and neither have gone on to do anything of note since either. I think there are far more important factors in determining the success of someone's education than when in the year they were born personally.