Summer-born children are being unfairly labelled by primary schools as having Special Educational Needs or Disabilities (SEND), according to new research.
For example, nearly half of summer-born boys are categorised as having SEND by primary schools, the paper says, creating needless anxiety for children and parents.
Using National Pupil Database (NPD) census records for over 6 million children who were in state primary schools over the years 2008-2018, Dr Tammy Campbell found that among children reaching Year 6 in 2018, 16% of autumn-born girls had been attributed SEND Support at some point during primary school, compared to 26% of summer-born girls, 28% of autumn-born boys, and 40% of summer-born boys.
Patterns of SEND attribution are mirrored and preceded by early ‘attainment’ tests during the first years of primary school. On average, from 2008 to 2018, only 39% of summer-born boys have been ascribed a ‘good level of development’ in the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile, at the end of reception, compared to 80% of autumn-born girls. At the end of Year 1, over the years 2012-2018, 64% of summer-born boys have been recorded as meeting the ‘expected standard’ in the Phonics Screening Check, compared to 84% of summer-born girls.
These disproportionalities by birth season and gender are present throughout primary school, across cohorts of children, and are most pronounced around the end of the infant years (age 6/7/8): by which point children have been subject to three sets of inflexible, non-age-standardised assessments. For example, when the cohort of children who finished primary school in 2018 were in Year 2, 8% of autumn-born girls were attributed school-level SEND Support, compared to 27% of summer-born boys.
Dr Campbell, Assistant Research Professor at LSE’s Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, argues that England’s rigid early testing and curriculum regimes are inappropriate, particularly for younger children. She explains that they are set up to sort children into the ‘expected’ and ‘good’ who ‘meet standards,’ and those who are deficient. This results in over-attribution to summer-borns of SEND, and contributes to “inequalities, inefficiencies and insufficiencies” within a dysfunctional SEND system.
