"Verspillt"? Why children who start school later often perform better

"I had a friend who went to school a year younger than me. Today I realise that the first few years at school were difficult for her. She cried a lot." Dr Audrey Bousselin is probably not alone with memories like these from her childhood in France. Each of us had peers who started school earlier – and perhaps had more difficulties precisely because of this.

Today, the researcher at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (Liser) knows how the time at which children start school can affect their personal development, but also their academic development. And thus possibly on their entire life course.

This finding is not new in the scientific literature. In Luxembourg, school attendance is compulsory from the age of four. To be more precise: children who are four years old before 1 September attend a pre-school class ("éducation préscolaire", cycle 1.1 or "Spillschoul"). Children born after the month of September "verspillen e Joer" (sit out a year), as the saying goes. The truth is that children who start school later do not lose anything, but on the contrary benefit from not formally attending primary school until up to a year later.

At the end of April, the economist published a paper together with Dr Andrea Albanese. "In our study, we found that children who start school earlier tend to be at a higher risk of repeating a school year." This risk is particularly high for children from disadvantaged and/or immigrant families.