A Christmas Warning to Parents
A recent article at MailOnline by Laura Clark made public the findings of a research conducted over the past 5 years by the experts at the Higher Education Policy Institute.
As many as 12,000 children a year miss out on university places because they were born in the summer, research shows.
Children born late in the school year are significantly less likely to go to university than their older classmates, a study found.
Just 28 per cent of August-born children went to university during the six years of the study compared with 32 per cent of those born in September, an analysis of university admissions by birth month showed.
This is especially significant because it is a long-observed trend that July, August and September are the months with the highest number of births.
Figures from 1998, for example, show that July had the most births - 8.9 per cent of the annual total - followed by September with 8.7 per cent and August with 8.6.
Experts at the Higher Education Policy Institute, who disclosed the figures yesterday, said it was stunning that birth month should have such a major impact on university prospects
What can I say? My advice to potential and aspiring parents is to become more statistically minded, especially between the Thanksgiving and Christmas time.
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[...] The disagreements concerning IQ scores as a measure of intelligence apart, I find it disconcerting that the new study did not apparently look into the correlation of IQ with mating habits. Just off the top of my hat, I would guess that the more liberal parents are the less likely they are to get into the playful mood in the course of Christmas festivities and, as a result, are less likely to produce an offspring with potential difficulties at school. [...]
March 8th, 2010 at 9:50 am