To think a child born on the 5th august isn’t that young for their school year

That's literally my birthday 🙈 I was the youngest in my class at school.

This isn’t true overall, summer months are generally pretty baby heavy months. July is almost always the highest and Feb is almost always the lowest for births.

And - if people who have a 2 or 3 year born past May of their year then please, please, please take advantage of the statutory opportunity of back yearing your child. They wouldn’t put something like this into law without good reason.

All this does, is drive the level of maturity in reception classes up, to the even greater detriment of the youngest.

At the end of the day, a school class is always going to contain a year long cohort. Wherever you draw that line, someone is going to be the youngest.

If you move summer borns from the class above down, you either:

• make august borns in the class below up to 15 months younger instead of 12

• make May born children the youngest in cohorts, and still up to 12 months younger that the oldest.

Neither create any benefit across the cohort, they simply exchange who is disadvantaged by the rules.

This is very good advice, but just to say it isn't too late to delay summer-borns. For England anyway.

(Flexible School Admissions for Summer Borns on Facebook has more for interested parties.)

So many people actively avoid having summer born DC. Its really noticeable in both my DC classes, that the birthdays are weighted heavily to the first half of the year.

DC2 has their birthday late august. They are the only august birthday in class, there is only one in july and only two in june. By contrast there are 12 children with birthdays sept-nov.

I'm an end of August baby. Although I did very well academically, I was very much on the back foot socially. Weirdly it was particularly noticeable when I went to uni and some other students who had had gap years were almost two years older than me. I'm a Reception teacher and I had a September baby and a March baby myself. The March baby was conceived in our last month of trying before taking a break to avoid a Summer born. From a Reception teaching perspective, the academic and social gap can be huge between a September baby and an August baby, even one born on the 5th!

There was only one August birthday in each of my children 's classes. Lots in June and July though.

My daughter is 8th August and was the 2nd youngest in her class throughout primary school, she started secondary last September and thinks she is about the youngest in her year there, she hasn't met anyone yet who is younger than her. Her best friend is August 4th and in the class of 30 at primary school, 4 of them were August born.

if you (incorrectly) assume an even distribution of births over 365 93% of children will be older

taking into account an non even distribution I would say 95% of children will be

so with a class of 30 on average 1-2 children max will be younger

Thanks for articulating this better than I could process it in my own brain. I was so confused reading the question. The OP either lives in Scotland or has a completely different concept of time to me.

ETA I don’t think OP living in Scotland can explain it actually because re-reading it they do specify three weeks so clearly they’re somewhere where the cut off is September.

It's not hard to work out that, with 49 weeks of the academic year before that date, the vast majority of the year will be older.

But it's pointless to speculate. Wait till they start school and discover whether they are in fact the youngest or nearly the youngest.

My 8 year old was born on the 24/8/2017 he’s the 2nd youngest in his year 4 class, but he’s in a mixed year 3/4 class so he’s with younger kids.

I’d be surprised if there were “many” born after that.
What’s your reason for asking?

My son is a June baby and was in the oldest half of his reception class, but only because about 20 out of 30 of the kids were born in July and August. My daughter’s reception class was much more mixed birthday wise. It was one class per year btw they didn’t split the year into 2 classes. 4 years and 3 months seemed so little to start school.

Depends on the year.

Assuming UK there are approx 30 kids in a class and 365 days they could be born on bar leap years so round it to one every 12 days. That means you'd expect 2 kids younger. Of course birthdays aren't spread evenly and you'd have deferrals, disproportionately affecting August, which means that it's not unlikely for them to be the youngest. Then there are different class sizes depending on school which would affect that too.

Why does it matter?

There won't be loads who are younger. Maybe one or two, or maybe yours will be youngest.

I'm guessing you didn't really pay attention in your maths classes did you?

I don’t think my dc, who is 17 and will wait till the second half of August to be 18 can see any benefits of having a birthday so late in the school year. So many of his friends are driving independently, they can go to the pub and there was a cinema trip to see an 18 film recently and he couldn’t go as he would be mortified to be asked for ID and turned away.
yes, a birthday on the 5th August means a child is ‘young’ in their year group.

depends on where you live.

in England they will be amongst the very youngest in Scotland they will be right in the middle because we do the dates of birth from March not September

Summer borns in NI are the oldest rather than the youngest. It’s nothing to do with the summer holidays, the year cut off is different so the youngest are never as young starting.

any birthday is 5th August and I can confirm I was always young for my year, not a single one of my friends were younger than me.

My DDs birthday is 11th August and she was the youngest in her year (2 form entry).

If there’s 52 weeks in the school year then being born in the 49th week is clearly - by a matter of statistics - going to make you one of the youngest.

Exactly. And despite what people still claim, no they don’t have to miss reception and go straight into Y1, and no they don’t have to miss the last year of primary and go straight to secondary.

It all depends on the child though, surely? My end of August born was walking unaided at 8 months, so no issues with gross motor skills, was reading and writing early.

I know this makes her school sound really shit - but I had to tell her year one teacher she was end of August born at her first year one parents eve last October and she was stunned, she thought she was one of the oldest.

That doesn’t change that as a general rule summer born youngest children struggle much more academically, socially and behaviourally at school.

They will be one of the youngest.

Loads of people who went to Oxford or Cambridge will be along to tell you that they were born on the 20-something of August and it didn’t make any difference for them etc etc (their exhausted parents will tell you how hard they had to work to make that so) but don’t listen to outliers.
It is already too late to defer for summer born entry so you might as well get on with it but understand that (state) education from Reception upwards is a system and that they will always be “behind” even if they are doing great for them/their stage. This will hold them “back” for ages (until teens - again don’t listen to outliers - look at the fact that all 11+ exams weight for age so they know Augusts will do worse than Septembers (on average - again wait for someone to tell you “their” story that contradicts this) - so in short you have to put the home support effort in for a long time to come.

I know people will say how cruel and how rude etc but there’s little point in sugaring this pill - get on it long term - big support over time - then they’ll flourish.

And - if people who have a 2 or 3 year born past May of their year then please, please, please take advantage of the statutory opportunity of back yearing your child. They wouldn’t put something like this into law without good reason.