Give Them Time? - The Effects of Deferred School Start

孩子出生在学年截止日期前后的父母面临着一个两难境地：他们是否应该尽快送孩子上学，从而让他们作为同龄人中最年轻的成员进入小学？或者他们应该推迟一年入学，从而让他们的孩子成为年龄最大的队列成员之一？后一种做法的支持者认为，延期教育使孩子们更加成熟，从而改善了入学准备和长期结果。反对者辩称，延期的成本--从额外一年的托儿费到一年的终身收入损失--并不能证明好处是合理的，甚至可能会适得其反，因为缺乏挑战的延期会变得缺乏动力。决定为这两所(学前班)学校提供资金的政策制定者显然也对这个问题感兴趣。我们提供新的和-考虑到最近推迟规则的改革-及时的答案，将有助于指导家长、从业者和政策制定者。为此，我们求助于苏格兰，它非常适合研究推迟上学的短期和长期影响。我们使用个人水平的学生普查数据来追踪从2007年到现在的苏格兰学生的总体情况。我们的技术和经验丰富的研究团队在将这些高质量数据与成就数据近乎完美地联系起来方面取得了成功的记录，现在将把数据联系扩展到与学生行为、健康、资历和高等教育目的地有关的信息。我们也是第一批分析延期对体验和欺凌行为影响的人之一。为了确保研究设计的创新性和健壮性，我们利用了两个自然实验。首先，长期存在的截止日期决定了学生是否有资格推迟入学。我们的回归间断设计将通常在五岁开始上学的学生(例如，12月31日出生的学生)与可能推迟一年入学的学生(例如，1月1日出生的学生)进行比较。只要阈值两侧的学生之间唯一的差异是延迟率的差异，我们就可以分离出延迟率的因果关系。其次，2021年，苏格兰部分地区被选中试行一项计划，为所有推迟入学的儿童提供自动托儿所资助。我们将通过差异法分析这项改革的短期影响，这种方法将参与试点的地方当局的学生与没有资格的地方当局的学生之间的结果变化进行比较。为了确保影响，我们与几个利益攸关方合作。苏格兰政府(SG)已同意提供访问该项目所需的各种数据集。SG还明确表示对我们的研究感兴趣，确保我们的研究结果确实将为政策提供参考并形成政策。我们将利用研究机构--包括斯特拉斯克莱德的阿兰德研究所的弗雷泽和格拉斯哥的罗伯特·欧文教育改革中心--与当地和国家的主要利益攸关方建立的良好网络。这些机构还拥有向广大受众传播研究成果的杰出平台。这些联系将确保来自一系列从业者和学者的意见，并促进跨学科和地方政策制定者的传播。这个项目的一个重要的次要目标和遗产是为苏格兰和其他地区的教育研究人员建立一个学生数据库。研究人员可以将此资源用于未来的项目，或在我们的工作基础上添加更多可用信息。结合我们与SG合作提供的免费数据，这方面确保了我们的项目提供了极高的性价比。为了支持广泛的适应和进一步的能力建设，我们组建了一个横跨3所苏格兰大学的团队，其中包括早期职业生涯和经验丰富的研究人员。

Parents with children who were born around school year cut-off dates face a dilemma: Should they send their children to school as soon as possible, thus entering them into primary school as the youngest members of their cohort? Or should they delay school entry by one year, thus entering their child as one of the oldest cohort member? Proponents of the latter practice argue that deferral equips children with more maturity which improves school readiness and long-term outcomes. Opponents argue that the costs of deferral - ranging from an additional year of nursery fees to a 1-year loss in life-time earnings - do not justify the benefits, or may even be counter-productive as underchallenged deferrers become demotivated. Policy makers who decide on funding for both (pre-)schools also have an obvious interest in the issue.We provide new and - given recent reforms to deferral rules - timely answers that will help guide parents, practitioners, and policy makers. For this we turn to Scotland which is uniquely suited to investigate both short-term and long-term effects of school starting deferral. We use individual-level pupil census data to track the universe of Scottish pupils from 2007 until the present. Our skilled and experienced research team has a successful track record of near-perfectly linking these high-quality data with attainment data and will now extend data linkage to information related to pupils' behaviour, health, qualifications, and post-secondary school destinations. We are also among the first to analyse the effect of deferral on the experience and the act of bullying.To ensure an innovative and robust research design, we exploit two natural experiments. First, long-standing cut-off dates determine whether pupils are eligible for deferral. Our regression discontinuity design compares pupils who will typically start school in the year they turn five (e.g. those born on December 31st) with pupils who are likely to defer school entry by 1 year (e.g. born on January 1st). As long as the only difference between pupils on either side of the threshold are differences in deferral rates, we can isolate the causal effect of deferral. Second, in 2021 parts of Scotland were chosen to pilot a scheme that provides automatic nursery funding entitlement to all children who defer school entry. We will analyse the short-run effects of this reform by way of a differences-in-differences approach that compares changes in outcomes among pupils in local authorities that are part of the pilot with pupils from local authorities without the entitlement.In order to ensure impact, we partner with several stakeholders. The Scottish Government (SG) has agreed to provide access to the various datasets required for this project. SG has also expressed an explicit interest in our research ensuring that our findings will indeed inform and shape policy. We will take advantage of the excellent networks that the researchers' institutions - including the Fraser of Allander Institute at Strathclyde and Robert Owen Centre for Educational Change at Glasgow - have with key local and national stakeholders. These institutions also have outstanding platforms to disseminate research outputs to a wide audience. These links will ensure input from a range of practitioners and academics and facilitate dissemination across disciplines and local policy makers. An important secondary goal and legacy of this project is to build a pupil database for education researchers in Scotland and beyond. Researchers can use this resource for future projects or build on our work by adding more information as it becomes available. Combined with free-of-charge data provision by way of our partnership with SG, this aspect ensures that our project offers excellent value for money. To support wide adaption and to further capacity building, we have assembled a team stretching across 3 Scottish universities that includes both early career and experienced researchers.