The multidimensional nature of students' maturity: the Spanish case

Abstract

Many research works have claimed the relevance that students’ maturity may have in their academic achievement, but in spite of this importance, this maturity concept is not so easy to delimit and measure. Because of that, the current work proposes to measure students’ maturity by three different proxies: the ages when children begin to read and write, the bimester of birth and grade retention. To perform this analysis, a representative sample of primary (age 11–12) and secondary education (age 15–16) Andalusian students (the most populated region in Spain) was used. Our results have shown the unsuitability of the bimester of birth and the ages when children begin to read and write as instruments for grade retention, which supports that the three measure different dimensions of students’ maturity. In addition, results show that an early beginning in reading and writing positively associates with students’ academic achievement.