This rapid review of research evidence was commissioned by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) to investigate the issue of relative age in the international context. The review findings are drawn from 18 research studies published from 2000 to 2008 and carried out in Australia, Chile, the United Kingdom and the USA together with…

Comparison of Great Britain's and other countries' school admission policies suggested that, while Great Britain already has one of the lowest statutory admission ages in Europe and the United States, there is a trend in England and Wales to admit children to school at an even younger age. (Author/CB)

Retrospective examination of primary graders' (N=34) preschool performance on a predictive instrument and its relationship to primary school reading achievement found that those judged as needing (and who took) another year of preschool were reading significantly better than others who displayed similar developmental anomalies but did not take…

Starting school is a transition marked by excitement, trepidation, happiness, or sadness for all involved. This issue of the Australian Early Childhood Association Research in Practice Series discusses some of the issues described as important by children, parents, and preschool and elementary educators in an interview study of children's…

A recently implemented program in a decentralized provincial district of Papua New Guinea delays the entry of children into English-medium primary school for two years, during which time the children are taught literacy in a village-based school in their indigenous language, a pidgin, with the local customs and culture as the basis of the…

Reports on a study of the role of pupil age in scholastic performance among 4,123 Maltese primary-age students. Finds a strong and consistent age effect in Maltese, English, and mathematics achievement in three grade levels. Also finds that girls consistently outperformed boys in the three subjects. (CFR)

The claim that the incidence of school failure can be greatly reduced by increasing kindergarten entrance age from 57 to 60 months was investigated in three related studies. In the first study, subjects ranging in school entrance age from 57 to 68 months were drawn from five elementary schools in an urban lower socioeconomic area. A total of 114…

Measures of preschool cognition and indicators of family socioeconomic status predicted school enrollment for children in four Guatemalan villages. For children who went to school, socioeconomic status and preschool abilities were associated with age-at-entry, and with the number of grades passed and the maximum grade attained through age seven.…

This case study describes an innovative school entry system in which children are registered at school according to their stage of development, not their age. The system was introduced by law in Hungary in 1986. In this study, an introduction is followed by a discussion of problems in curricular articulation. Problems are discussed in terms of the…

The purpose of this study was to obtain and analyze information on the characteristics of the child entering school for the first time in junior kindergarten, senior kindergarten and grade one. A sample of 209 children from different areas in Ontario, Canada, including rural, urban, inner city and metropolitan areas, was studied. Information was…