Unfair to defer summer borns

@flutterby1 how do you infantisie a a child who has just turned 4, they are infants?? Comments like this make me shudder.

Haven’t read the full 29pages just OPs updates.

Are you in England op? From my experience of deferring my August born dd it’s not that easy to just say I want to hold my child back a year. We had to justify why we wanted the deferral and why it would be detrimental for our dd to not be deferred, providing report and relevant documents supporting our request.

For reference my DDs still the smallest in her class even after being deferred a year.

No child should have to struggle giving summer born June, July, Aug or in NI case April, May, June a chance to defer if needed is vital for those children who need it. Some will nd some won't. I really wish I'd had option to defer my two children who were young for their year

Well, the history of compulsory schooling is probably a bit of a long post to add here. Although this timeline might be an jump off point.

www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/school/keydates/

Children who are intending to enter school don't have to begin until the term after they turn 5. This is consistent with the Education Act of 1880 that brought in compulsory schooling for 5 - 10 year olds. So, that's not changed in terms of starting age. No child has to be in education before the age of 5.

A significant change in the mid 2000s was the loss of the additional January intake for reception. I believe there'd also been an Easter intake before that, the staggered start allowing parents to send their child to reception at nearer to 4.5 dependant on their birthday.

I'd also reference the 1988 Education Act and introduction of the National Curriculum as an important change. Subsequent to this standardised testing at younger and younger ages has made the age of starting school more pronounced. Children of barely age 4 compared to children at 5 are up against it a when compared to each other, if only in terms of motor skills. If continuing to have one intake from September to August there should, at the very least, be no formalised testing throughout primary school to accommodate these differences.

Mine are both August born. They will still be 15 when receiving GCSE results. Eldest sits them next week. I didn’t defer. At the time they both seemed ready for nursery at 3 (pre school) and reception at 4. My eldest was always the same size as the older born kids and it was never really obvious that she was the youngest in the class. My younger daughter did look younger. Bizzarely the nursery said they were running out of things to give my youngest when she was in pre school as she was working at the same level and often beyond as the older kids. Emotionally still younger though. But she would have been bored to death if she was kept back. And for top scores in SATs and in y8 has a
had a try of some of the past GCSE papers my oldest has brought home to do for revision has done just as well on subject like the maths. My eldest was really cross about this. My eldest was always in the brighter group in primary but more top middle in secondary and is predicted 5s although is aiming higher for the GCSEs. I don’t think another year would help. She’s autistic so is emotionally a bit younger than her peers - not interested in friendships or romantic relations. But that’s more to do with autism than being the youngest. My youngest has better like skills than her.

It’s always been weird that they literally have their birthday and turn 15 for example, return to school to classmates turning 16.

I think where there is obvious learning difficulties then it could be worth staying back a year, but often with learning difficulties and other sen another year wouldn’t really make that much difference to outcomes.

It’s ridiculous and (yet) another example of the snowflake generation enabled by poor parenting. I mean April isn’t even the summer, how on earth is that captured by “summer born”. And it only became a legal right in 2022, how did kids survive for the first 150 years of compulsory schooling???

It's the system that's not fit for purpose.

As the late, great Ken Robinson pointed out, it's based on the factory model and dates back to industrial era Britain, "Students are educated in batches, according to age, as if the most important thing they have in common is their date of manufacture."

It should be about readiness, which is more about social and emotional than academic aptitude (the importance of which is hugely overblown in our current system anyway). There should be at least a 2 year spread from which you can choose based on your own assessment of your child, with high quality play based pre-school funding available until the point of formal education.

Most other developed countries offer something along these lines. In Europe and the U.S school proper doesn't begin until 6-7. To start earlier really stunts younger children who should be learning through play. Even if reception offers play led learning by Year 1 there's an emphasis on phonics (of which I'm not a fan, but that's a whole other thread) at which point some of the cohort will barely have turned 5.

Blaming other parents for deferring, which they are legally allowed to do, is really to misplace your ire.

I get where you are coming from, my DGD is 11 months younger than some in her class. She is coming up for seven after summer when some are coming up for eight. She is managing, is in the same reading groups as some of the older ones but some things she struggles with. Im sure parents do it so that their child has a head start, when did this become a thing?

We deferred our son he was born in august, what with covid and his first school being a steiner school we decided we would rather him be the oldest rather than youngest as boys generally develop slower and he was quite behind anyway. So glad we did. He's also small for his age so for his self esteem worked out doubley well. It's totally dependant on the child, parents and school and if it's right to wait regardless of April or August then people should do what's best for their kids. And no the rules don't need tightening, school sets u up for life if in doubt u need to makebthe best decision for their future.

My son was summer born…literally the end of august. If he had been born only two days later, he would’ve been in the year below and the oldest in his class. He started school just after he turned four and has never suffered for it. He’s now 14 and about to take his mock GCSEs in year 10. My daughter on the other hand is a September baby and is the oldest in her class. By the time she was old enough to go into primary school, she was so ready for it. My children mirror myself and my brother. I was the youngest in my class and my brother was the oldest.

I’m in England, and can see why people are tempted to defer. It can feel like late August babies are very young - only a few days from being 3. Scotland’s answer has always seemed an easy solve to me - setting the birth date as March, even though their academic year starts in August. So no child starts younger than 4 years 5 months old.

Well, at least you’ve reduced ‘the almost 2 year age range’ to 16 - 18 months now 😉
Seriously @harrietm87, you’re the one who keeps chipping away at this!

I don’t agree that large age gaps cause no issues btw. Every year there are children who would have benefitted from starting a year later, maybe at 5 and a half instead of 4 and a half. More of the younger children need additional support from the SEN teachers. It’s not a coincidence.

If they all started later, then you’re right, the age range wouldn’t matter as much (this has been shown in studies, it’s not just my opinion btw, but I’m not going to search for the references now.) The vast majority would be developmentally ready then. However, at the age they do start in Ireland it does matter. In England the average starting age is younger, which makes things worse.

Just go back through my posts and check what I actually said. It’s not misleading unless you have trouble reading.

Saying “there can be an almost 2 year age range within a class” is correct since that is what the law allows (as you accept). I didn’t say anything like “it is common to have a 2 year range” or “there is always a 2 year range”. In fact I said the vast majority start between 4.5 and 5.5 which is the case.

What is common, and relevant here, is for there to be 16-18 month gaps within a class (eg between a child starting at 4 years 3 months, and one starting at 5 years and 7 months), and for that not to be an issue whatsoever.

The whole system being based on age is the issue. I have an October born who is more than ready to start school in September but has to wait another 12 months. Starting (& moving up years) should be based on the actual child not an arbitrary birth date.

If my grandson had been born one day later, he would have another year before starting school. He was born a couple of weeks early too. I'm pretty sure he won't be mature enough for reception class in September and he'll struggle as his speech is poor. I'd defer him for sure but it isn't up to me. It's nothing to do with wanting him to be better than other kids, it just wanting him to have a confident start to his school life.

There's one church school in our town that has a nursery. It's subsidised, but not free.
We also don't have many primary schools. We have separate infant and junior schools, but they don't feed into each other so you still have to apply.

I only know of one of those in my area. None of the schools local to me have them. Also where they do exist they aren’t always viable for working parents as , unlike schools, they don’t have after- or before- hours clubs.

Why do you want to say to other families how to do is the question…

In some other countries, children don’t even have to attend before 7years of age but yeah…

I agree with you, there has to be a cut off point somewhere. When I was headteacher I tried not to do this, to keep all the children together in their own year group. It seemed to me to be doubly disadvantaging the younger children. For the same reasons I didn't encourage the younger children to come part time when the rest were full time, or to come in a term later in reception.
My own son was summer born and I held the same principle for him. He always looked younger than the rest but he kept up.

That’s a pity. Do the primary schools not have nursery classes then, for children aged 3 plus?

I mean a school nursery. Almost every primary school in my area has a nursery attached for children aged 3 and older.

Typically nurseries are much more expensive than that- they don’t really do the “free hours” so much as use them to subsidise fees. It’s rare that you can actually get full school hours for free and no extra costs

Ive just checked and there are 16 maintained nurseries in my county. Our nearest one became a private nursery around 2019 because the council couldn't afford to fund it anymore.
School deferral also isn't an option in our County. Things vary so much area by area.

Funny how practically every European country can produce effective education and workers without dragging kids out of a nursery (play based education) and start school at 4yo. Most start at 6.

I regret allowing my 4yo (July born), to go to school at that age.

At no point in my career could I have afforded those nursery fees.