Can Starting Summer-born Children Earlier at Infant School Improve their National Curriculum Results?

The evidence presented here suggestes that it is the age-position of the child in the class that overrides the advantages (if any) of an increase in the length of formal schooling. That is not to say that an increase in the length of 'appropriate' schooling is not beneficial but that, using evidence from National Curriculum Assessment, length of formal schooling per se does not improve performance on the Key Stage 1 assessment tasks. The youngest children receiving the longer length of infant education did not achieve significantly higher outcomes than those receiving a shorter time in education.