The distance between the birth date and the school entry cutoff has been repeatedly used as an exogenous instrument to examine the impact of several educational programmes. In this work, we analyse the validity of this instrument for the case of Argentina. Considering multiple waves of the Permanent Household Survey we detect the existence of…

In countries with a school-entry cutoff date, individuals born right after the cutoff are almost 1 year older than individuals in the same school cohort born right before that date. Abundant research has documented that, as a result of that extra year of maturation and skill accumulation, older students in a cohort outperform their younger peers.…

The present research attempted to investigate the impacts of gender and age on the freshly-graduated eighth graders' percentiles in the central high school entrance exam (LGS) in 2020. The sample of this causal-comparative study comprised 6,039 students selected from secondary schools in Isparta who took the LGS in 2020. The data were obtained…

The month in which we are born affects our experience of and progress through the education system and is known as the relative age effect. This study reports on a project in which the author conducted mixed methods research into the impact of different birth months on enrolment patterns and participant experiences within further education in…

Grade retention has been the focus of the education debate in Spain for decades. On average, more than 30% of students have repeated at least one grade before they finish (or dropout from) their compulsory studies. The present research provides new evidence on this issue by investigating the influence of Spain's school entry age upon students'…

Research on the effects of nursery school attendance still presents divergent results: a possible explanation is that the effects of child care on development outcomes can be modulated by individual characteristics, such as gender or temperament. In the present study, gender differences in nursery adaptation (evaluated by social skills and…

This paper estimates peer effects on children's school entry age, using a dataset on 4,165 children from rural northwestern China (Gansu province). Instrumental-variable estimation, exploiting variations in (older) peers' home-to-school distance to identify the effect of their school entry age, reveals that a one-year increase in (older) peers'…

Understanding the factors that influence student outcomes is crucial for both parents and schools when designing effective educational strategies. This paper explores the impact of peer age on both cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes using a randomized sample of middle school students. By analyzing how exogenous variations in peer age affect…

Using an unanticipated policy reform in Mexico that shifted 4 months the cutoff date for elementary school eligibility in 2006 and information on academic performance of 15-year-old students from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 survey, who entered first grade in 2006, this paper estimates the effects of starting…

The education laws of each country establish starting cutoff dates for compulsory education which could, potentially, affect students' academic achievement. Specifically, they could be detrimental for those students whose birthday is just before the school entry cutoff, as they will be the youngest in their classroom, while it could boost the…

This small-scale interpretative study, carried out in the reception classes of three English primary academies, examined educator perceptions of summer-born children, their expectations of children on entry to reception classes and whether those expectations were age differentiated. It also investigated the support and intervention strategies used…

This study investigated the effect of children's first formal school years on mathematical skill profiles, measured by a variety of arithmetical skills and Spontaneous Focusing On Numerosity (SFON) tasks. By using person-centered approach the aim was to investigate whether the amount of formal schooling is associated with mathematical skills in…

The timing of children's start to school is the interest of researchers, policy-makers and especially parents. Researches on this issue have recently pointed to the concept of relative age effect (RAE). The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of RAE on mathematics achievement in Turkey. In order to accomplish this purpose, the…

Because of the regulations concerning school entry in most school systems, a child's date of birth may significantly affect his or her age at entry into school, and thus their first experience of schooling. Using data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), this paper provides a comparative analysis of the impact of a…

Relative age effects (RAEs) explain the (dis)advantages individuals experience as a result of when they are born relative to a pre-determined cut-off date. Within an interuniversity setting, academic timing (AT) may moderate the RAE pattern due to some student-athletes having eligibility years that do not correspond with their birth years. The…