Exploring the Associations Between Delayed School Entry and Achievement in Primary and Secondary School

Abstract

This research investigated whether delayed school entry was associated with higher achievement in national tests of reading and numeracy in Grades 3, 5, 7, and 9 (n = 2,823). Delayed entry was related to advantages in reading (0.14 SD) and numeracy (0.08 SD) at Grade 3, although little variance was explained (1%-2%). This slight advantage persisted for both domains in Grades 5 and 7, albeit with smaller effects. In Grade 9 there was no association between delayed entry and either reading or numeracy. Exploratory analyses with subsamples in each grade (n = 424-667) revealed no associations between delayed entry and achievement after controlling for inattention and hyperactivity, and negative associations between inattention and achievement in all grades in both domains (À0.33, À0.49 SD).

The codevelopment of reading and attention from middle childhood to early adolescence: A multivariate latent growth curve study.

“…While rates of global ADHD diagnoses tend to decline as children age into adolescence (Faraone et al, 2006;Willcutt, 2012), a small number of studies examining symptom trajectories of hyperactivity and attention separately suggest that while hyperactive behaviors decline over time, attention symptoms are reasonably stable (Leopold et al, 2019;Willoughby, 2003). Furthermore, there is consistent evidence that the inattention subdomain of ADHD relates more strongly to reading achievement than the hyperactivity subdomain, both at cross-sectional time-points and in longitudinal designs (Carroll et al, 2005;Daucourt et al, 2020;Duncan et al, 2007;Larsen et al, 2021;Lonigan et al, 2017;Pingault et al, 2011;Rabiner et al, 2016;Rhoades et al, 2011;Schmiedeler & Schneider, 2014;Washbrook et al, 2013). In a systematic review of studies investigating longitudinal links between ADHD symptoms and academic achievement, Polderman et al (2010) noted that the inattentive domain was more consistently related to academic achievement than the hyperactivity domain and the direction of the association was consistently negative despite variation in study designs and measures.…”

“…All nine items are reproduced in the online supplementary materials. It is common for the items to be summed or averaged before being used in statistical analyses (e.g., Hay et al, 2007;Larsen et al, 2021;Polderman et al, 2007), in this study we compare models which include the nine items for each grade level as multiple indicators of latent factors, and models which use a mean score of the nine items. Greatest lower bound statistics for the reliability of the nine-item scale at each grade level are: Grade 3 = .96; Grade 5 = .96; Grade 7 = .97; Grade 9 = .96.…”

Relative age effects on academic achievement in the first ten years of formal schooling: A nationally representative longitudinal prospective study.

“…Hence, there are many idiosyncratic state-to-state differences in schools' organization, including cut-off dates for starting school. Following recommendations by McNeish and Stapleton (2016; also see Larsen et al, 2020), differences between states were controlled with fixed-effect models using dichotomous variables representing each state as a fixed-effect variable.…”

“…In a recent Australian study, Larsen et al (2020) considered results from a large database of twins to evaluate the effects of delayed-entry (i.e., “red-shirting”) at the start of school. Rather than RAEs per SE , their focus was on relative starting age indexed by a dichotomous variable representing delayed entry, excluding students who repeated a grade.…”

“…There is increasing public recognition of RAEs in which relatively older students are potentially advantaged for a range of physical, social, emotional achievement, motivation, and self-belief outcomes that are related to age and maturity (Barnsley et al, 1985; Thompson et al, 1999). In recognition of this phenomenon, in many educational systems, parents may decide to hold back their children for an additional year following normal schooling starting age—a practice known as redshirting that is on the increase (Hanly et al, 2019; Larsen et al, 2020; Marsh, 2016; Mergler & Walker, 2017). Also, in some school systems, grade retention of underperforming students is widespread (Marsh, 2016).…”