Cambodia defies Gladwell's outliers

My eldest nephew was born in February so he could have started school either aged 4 and a half or five and a half. My sister, intuitively knowing what Malcolm Gladwell explained his in book 'Outliers', decide that he would start when he was 5 and a half.

Gladwell explained that in Canada people born at the start of the year are more likely to become professional ice hockey players than people born at the end of the year. When children are young, say 8 years old, the 11 month difference between being born in January and in December can create large physical advantages. The older kids are bigger and stronger and catch the eye of the coaches, who in turn provide more and better coaching. This makes the kids born at the start of the year, bigger, stronger and more skilled and makes them much more likely to be come professional ice hockey players. 

The NGO that I'm working with recently tested 1000 children in each grade 4, 5 and 6 in language and maths. As part of this, we also collected data on children's ages. In grade 4, children should be age 9, possibly 10 depending on what month they were born in; in grade 5, age 10, possibly 11; and in grade 6, age 11, possibly 12. However, off all 3000 children, only 30% were in the grade that corresponds to their age - and that includes all of the children who could be a year older because of the month that they were born in.

A school in Kampot province

In Cambodia, there are large problems with children enrolling in grade 1 already older than age 6 which is the age at which they should enrol. In 2011/12, 31.5% of all children starting grade 1 were older than 6. It is also common for many children to repeat grades which leads to so many children being overage.

In contrast to ice hockey, where older children enjoy physical benefits that assist them, children enrolling late experience mental deficiencies which harm their education. Our tests showed that overage children did worse than children of the "correct" age, and that the older you were, the worse you did on the tests. Starting school late leads to poorer educational attainment. 

She was laughing at my Khmer language skills

The overnight guard who works 6pm until 6am at the apartments across from us plucked up the courage to speak English to me the other day. He told me that during the day he went to school and that he was in grade 10. He is 24, which is one year older than the woman my research colleague met last week, who dropped out of grade 7 to get married. In Cambodia, these two probably aren't even outliers. 

Gordon