Rendimiento académico en función del “efecto de la edad relativa” en escolares rurales colombianos

Abstract

The relative age effect (RAE) is the set of consequences of grouping by year of birth, without taking into account that there may be a difference of up to 11 months and 30 days between individuals born at the extremes of the same year. With the objective of establishing the relative age effect on academic performance in elementary, middle and high school students of a rural Colombian educational institution, within the quantitative approach, an observational, retrospective descriptive and relational cross-sectional study was carried out. The total number of students of the rural school enrolled in 2019 was 220 (90 men, 130 women), with an average age of 12.8 ± 3.0 years. The date of birth was divided into quarters and later into semesters. Academic performance was established based on the results of the total average for the year and for each of the areas of mathematics, language and natural sciences. Students with special educational needs and over-aged students equal to or greater than two years were excluded. Using the statistical program R, measures of central tendency and dispersion were estimated and the age of the students was related to academic performance, socioeconomic level and gender. The results show that students born in the first semester of each year did not have a significantly higher academic performance than those born in the second semester of that same year and grade. By areas of knowledge, it was found that those students who have good academic performance in one of the areas tend to have good performance in the others and that female students had better results than male students. In conclusion, no relationship was found between the effect of relative age and academic performance in schoolchildren in the rural educational institution. However, teachers and academic authorities are advised to take this effect into account in order to avoid unfair comparisons between schoolchildren who have very different development, even if they are in the same grade or were born in the same year.

Keywords

relative age

Relative age effect

academic performance

education

rural education

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