The Summer Gap The long-awaited Summer holidays are coming up. A period for rest and relaxation of course, but don't get too comfortable or you may just end up harming your education in the long term. Malcolm Gladwell, who I have discussed before, uses reading scores from nursery to fourth grade to show that low, middle and high-income children all gain academically during the school year. It’s in fact the summer months where the achievement gap occurs. Yes, you read that right. The summer months are the major culprits. Focusing on just the summers, Gladwell shows that low-income children experience a net loss in education when we add up the summers. By contrast, middle and high-income children continue to gain in reading over the summer. Suddenly one of the causes of Asian math superiority also becomes even more obvious. Students in Asian schools don't have long summer vacations. The school year in the UK, on average, is 190 days long. The South Korean school year is 220 days long. The Japanese school year is 243 days long. {Excerpt from Outliers} During my time at Oxford, the top 2 students in my Engineering cohort were both of Pakistani origin [A similar pattern is seen across other STEM subjects]. Surprised? You shouldn't be based on what we discussed above. In future articles, I will discuss some other factors which lead to a disproportionate number of top Asian students.
Why does this happen?
Quite simple, most parents have never heard of summer learning loss. They don’t know that their children experience a “summer slide” if their brains are not stimulated over the summer months. They don’t know that teachers spend the first weeks of school re-teaching material from the previous school year!
"Children struggle in September as they have forgotten prior learning. They then struggle to catch up because of the demands of SATS. To overcome that, attending Tuition during summer stands them in good stead from the off and gives them a greater advantage over other children".
Mr Shaikh, experienced primary school teacher and 11+ specialist.
What can you do about it?
Continue learning throughout the summer. It doesn't have to be super intense but as long as you have a good base prepared for when you go back then you should be fine.
As always, your comments and thoughts are welcome on the topic.
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