Every so often there is a groundswell of opinion about the need to change the English school year, which currently runs from September to July, to make it more suited to a modern age.
We are also used to claims that children born in the late summer suffer the disadvantage of always being the youngest & smallest in the class & that these disadvantages have effects which may persist throughout their life.
I have put these two concerns together to come up with the new proposal that the school year should begin in April.
March has been the peak month for births through most of the years of compulsory education in Britain – which means that the average child was born half way through the school year & the benefits or disadvantages of relative youth or senescence more evenly spread throughout the class, & may even have encouraged children to help each other out in various ways.
Now that September babies have not just age & size but also numerical advantage – the birth rate now peaks in September – we could restore equity by adopting my simple proposal
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