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Redshirting in Quebec Elementary Schools: For Greater Parental Freedom of Choice

Economic Note showing how postponing school entry for some children would respect the unique developmental pace of all children and favour their future academic success

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This Economic Note was prepared by Guillaume Pouliot, Assistant Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy and the College at the University of Chicago and Associate Researcher at the MEI, in collaboration with Emmanuelle B. Faubert, Economist at the MEI. The MEI’s Education Policy Series aims to explore the extent to which greater institutional autonomy and freedom of choice for students and parents lead to improvements in the quality of educational services.

Certain children with exceptional intellectual abilities are sometimes admitted into the first grade of elementary school earlier than the educational system normally allows. Less often discussed is the parental choice to postpone school entry in the interest of helping their child.

This is not a case of repeating a year of schooling. Rather, this “redshirting” is special dispensation to voluntarily delay a child’s school entry in order to allow for the acquisition of sufficient maturity, among other things.(1)

In Canada, education is a provincial jurisdiction. In Quebec, the Education Act sets the age of compulsory school attendance at six years.(2) While most youths are ready to go to school at this age, some are not, especially among the youngest of a given cohort. With-out necessarily representing a handicap, some children need more time before beginning elementary school. Even though parents are generally very invested in their children’s education and know whether or not they are ready, the decision is not theirs to make.

Substantial Developmental Gaps in First Grade

This restriction of parents’ decision-making power is all the more questionable given the considerable variation in children’s development at this age. We are not all born with the same abilities, and in particular, we do not all develop at the same pace, whether cognitively, emotionally, or physically.

We are not all born with the same abilities, and we do not all develop at the same pace, whether cognitively, emotionally, or physically.

Quebec has developed a tool to weigh these developmental differences among children who attend five-year-old kindergarten: the Québec Survey of Child Development in Kindergarten (QSCDK).(3) Carried out every five years since 2012, the survey uses the Early Development Instrument.(4) The process is simple, but rigorous: for each student, teachers assess five key domains of development, namely 1) physical health and well-being, 2) social competence, 3) emotional maturity, 4) language and cognitive development, and 5) communication skills and general knowledge.

A child who, for any one developmental domain, scores in the bottom decile of the distribution of scores for all Quebec children in kindergarten in a given year is considered vulnerable.(5) While relative, this measure shows that certain children are less prepared than others to begin school. Indeed, the data(6) show that in 2022, more than one child in four was considered vulnerable in at least one of the key developmental domains (see Figure 1).

In Quebec, parents can request a school waiver, but it is difficult to obtain, since they must prove that late school entry will allow their child to avoid “serious harm.” Several conditions must also be met(7) for the request to be accepted. It is an exceptional measure for which one must assemble a complete file including the professional opinions of the preschool teacher, the school administration, and a school service centre specialist. In any case, postponing the schooling of a child is not left to parents’ discretion. The final decision belongs to the school service centre.

Relative Age: A Determinant of Academic Success the Current System Ignores

Because of the rigidity of this system, children born a few days before the cut-off date for compulsory school attendance are likely to be disadvantaged compared to their barely older peers, due to differences in maturity. A child born just before the cut-off date would be relatively younger than his or her classmates, while a child born just after would be relatively older. In the specialized literature, this is known as relative age.(8)

For example, within a single cohort of first grade students, children born on September 30th or a little earlier, due to their relatively young age, will on average be less developed physically, cognitively, emotionally, or socially when they start school toward the end of August. This immaturity can lead to special education challenges, like a reduced ability to follow instructions, more trouble managing emotions, or a lag in learning certain basic skills. Conversely, children born October 1st or a little later will benefit from greater maturity, which may give them an advantage.(9)

The effect of relative age on different academic performance indicators has been documented in the scientific literature. One study demonstrated that in grade four, results for the youngest in each cohort are 4 to 12 percentiles lower than those for older children in the cohort. This disadvantage persists into eighth grade, where the difference is between 2 and 9 percentiles.(10) In this same study, data from Canada and the United States indicates that the youngest are systematically less likely to attend university.

This immaturity can lead to special education challenges, like a reduced ability to follow instructions, more trouble managing emotions, or a lag in learning certain basic skills.

The advantage of relative age was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his bestseller Outliers, in which he illustrates this phenomenon both in the world of sports—where professional hockey players are disproportionately born in the first months of the year—and in the educational system.

Other research shows that students who are younger than their peers are more likely to exhibit learning difficulties. For example, one study concludes that an additional month of relative age reduces the probability of receiving special education services by 2% to 5%.(11) A 2003 Quebec study found that children born at the end of September are 35% more likely to be diagnosed with attention deficit disorder with or without hyperactivity (ADHD) than those born in early October.(12)

Figure 2 illustrates the remarkable differences in ADHD diagnoses for children born in the summer compared to those born in the fall or winter. Indeed, the data show that the birth months with the highest proportion of children diagnosed with ADHD are September, followed by August, and then July.(13)

According to a recent OECD study, these relative age differences have significant consequences on students’ educational paths.(14) The youngest students in a cohort not only achieve lower scores on standardized PISA tests,(15) but they also have a higher risk of repeating a grade and exhibiting learning difficulties. These initial disadvantages affect their confidence in themselves and their future educational choices, even potentially influencing their total level of schooling and their career prospects. More worrisome still, these effects are observed in the vast majority of the 45 countries studied, suggesting a systemic problem rather than a localized one.

Postponing School Entry: What the Research Says

Yet, delayed school entry is hardly a new practice. In the United States, it was already in use in the 1970s, and its popularity has been growing steadily since the 1980s.(16) Studies suggest that around 5% of all American children delay starting elementary school, and up to 14% in some U.S. states.(17)

In Quebec, however, the phenomenon remains marginal. For example, La Presse reported only 125 cases in 2009,(18) which represents around 0.2% of the 69,918 grade one students that year.(19) More recently, in 2019, the school boards (today a mix of school boards and school service centres) of Greater Montreal reported between 5 and 20 waivers for delayed school entry accepted per year, which again represents a miniscule percentage of 6-year-old students.(20) While no public data are available, these numbers show that the phenomenon remains marginal.

A 2003 Quebec study found that children born at the end of September are 35% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than those born in early October.

Even though more research is needed to better understand the causal nature and the impact of this practice, the existing results are compelling. In North Carolina, two studies(21) based on a change of policy with regard to the cut-off date for school enrolment found that delaying school entry by one year allowed students to achieve considerably better results in math and reading,(22) and that progress was maintained until the fifth grade.

Another Canadian study concluded that postponed school entry appeared to have more sustainable effects than involuntary delay on academic performance, especially when it comes to repeating a grade in elementary school, math results, and avoiding less prestigious courses of study. These benefits are more pronounced for underprivileged boys, who also exhibit reduced anxiety and mental exhaustion.(23)

Conclusion

Granting Quebec parents greater latitude to decide at what age their children start school would both better respect the unique developmental pace of each child and favour their future academic success. Given the differences in maturity observed among young children and the long-term consequences of these first school experiences, more flexible policies would better respond to the needs of individuals. Greater parental freedom in these decisions would facilitate a smoother transition toward school life by offering the most vulnerable children a framework that is better adapted to their development at this early stage of their educational paths. After all, parents are in the best position to assess the maturity of their children, and their level of preparedness for school.

References

  1. The term “redshirting” is used in the scientific literature and by many media outlets to refer to the practice of voluntarily postponing a child’s school entry, an analogy with university sports in the United States where certain members of a team, wearing a red jersey, do not play for a year as they work on their physical and technical development. Tímea Laura Molnár, “Can Academic Redshirting Shrink the Education Gender Gap? Causal Evidence on Student Achievement and Mental Health,” Central European University and IZA, June 30, 2024, p. 1.
  2. Government of Quebec, Education Act, s. 14, LégisQuébec, consulted December 19, 2024.
  3. Institut de la statistique du Québec, Québec Survey of Child Development in Kindergarten (QSCDK), consulted December 19, 2024.
  4. Institut de la statistique du Québec, Early Development Instrument Presentation, consulted December 19, 2024.
  5. Institut de la statistique du Québec, Enquête québécoise sur le développement des enfants à la maternelle 2022. Portrait statistique pour le Québec et ses régions administratives, October 2023, p. 36.
  6. Ibid., p. 106.
  7. Government of Quebec, Regulation respecting exceptional cases for admission to preschool and elementary school education, s. 5, LégisQuébec, consulted December 19, 2024.
  8. Kelly Bedard and Elizabeth Dhuey, “The Persistence of Early Childhood Maturity: International Evidence of Long-Run Age Effects,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2006, p. 1438.
  9. Ibid., pp. 1437-1438.
  10. Ibid., p. 1439.
  11. Elizabeth Dhuey and Stephen Lipscomb, “Disabled or young? Relative age and special education diagnoses in schools,” Economics of Education, Vol. 29, No. 5, 2010, p. 858.
  12. Catherine Haeck et al., “Surdiagnostic du TDAH au Québec: Impact de l’âge d’entrée à l’école, différences régionales et coûts sociaux et économiques,” CIRANO, Rapport de projets 2023RP-08, April 2023, p. 2.
  13. Ibid., p. 14.
  14. Pauline Givord, “How a student’s month of birth is linked to performance at school: New evidence from PISA,” OECD, No. 221, 2020.
  15. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is the OECD’s standardized international assessment to measure the skills of 15-year-old students in reading, math, and science. OECD, Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), consulted December 19, 2024.
  16. Elizabeth Graue and James DiPerna, “Redshirting and early retention: Who gets the ‘gift of time’ and what are its outcomes?” American Educational Research Journal, Vol. 37, No. 2, 2000, pp. 509-534; C. Kevin Fortner and Jade Marcus Jenkins, “Kindergarten redshirting: Motivations and spillovers using census-level data,” Early Childhood Research Quarterly, Vol. 38, 2017, p. 44.
  17. Daphna Bassok and Sean F. Reardon, “‘Academic redshirting’ in kindergarten: Prevalence, patterns, and implications,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Vol. 35, No. 3, pp. 284 and 296; C. Kevin Fortner and Jade Marcus Jenkins, ibid.
  18. Sylvia Galipeau, “La maternelle à 6 ans,” La Presse, August 21, 2008.
  19. Statistics Canada, Table 37-10-0007-01: Number of students in regular programs for youth, public elementary and secondary schools, by grade and sex, October 10, 2024.
  20. Florence Sara G. Ferraris, “Le ‘redshirting’, quand les dérogations scolaires font école,” Le Devoir, March 9, 2019.
  21. Philip J. Cook and Songman Kang, “Girls to the front: How redshirting and test-score gaps are affected by a change in the school-entry cut date,” Economics of Education Review, Vol. 76, p. 8; Jade Marcus Jenkins and C. Kevin Fortner, “Forced to Redshirt: Quasi-Experimental Impacts of Delayed Kindergarten Entry,” Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, April 2024, p. 7.
  22. Between 0.2 and 0.3 standard deviations.
  23. Tímea Laura Molnár, Essays in Applied Microeconomics, University of British Columbia, August 2017, p. 68.
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