Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Baby of the class

One of our Olympic athletes was due to become a father for the first time while he was away in Beijing, though the chances are he will now be home in time for the birth

The happy mother-to-be said on the radio that, when they expressed some disappointment about the due date, the midwife immediately assumed that they were worried about the effect on the baby’s schooling, since August babies are always the youngest in the class.

This made me remember my surprise when a friend (a headteacher herself) expressed concern that her grandchild was expected to be an August baby

There is of course research which shows that late summer babies ‘tend to’ do worse in exams & tests

But there are always (at least) two ways of looking at things

Suppose the baby is bright? Then they will avoid the problem of finding school boring as they work at the pace of the slowest child, & therefore possibly switching off & becoming disruptive