Deferring primary in Scotland

[hownowpurplecow]

Posting here as the Scotland boards are quiet. Just looking for some opinions really. DS1 is a late October birthday, we have the option to defer him starting P1 under the rules in Scotland brought in last year. My husband is very pro deferral, sees it as no disadvantage and lets DS have an extra year of play. I’m less sure, he’s bright, no developmental concerns, would turn 5 11 weeks after starting school so not youngest in the year. Most people I’ve spoken to say nobody regrets deferring but I still can’t shake my uncertainty? I don’t want to academically disadvantage him by sending him too soon, but I worry he could be socially disadvantaged as he gets older as he could potentially be a full year older than other kids in his year which would be more noticeable if he turned 13 in a class with 11 year olds? It would be much easier if they hadn’t brought in the new rules for deferring so I didn’t even have to think about it!

I suppose you could say S4 isn't compulsory for autumn's who defer school start.
If leaving age is 16 and they hit 16 in September is it worthwhile them even joining S4?

It's absolutely not utter madness any more than deferring a perfectly able September born child is!

I get your concerns but it makes sense to put her in school if you think she is ready.

I do think some of the older kids will be bored. I deferred my February boy but not my December boy.

December boy close to being youngest in year is doing much better in school than my deferred February boy did. I'm convinced my February boy was bored up until about P5.
I was advised to defer but I'm not convinced it was the right decision

I didn’t defer my January boy. Now a teenager and doing brilliantly. It is not utter madness if they are ready for school. And someone has to be the youngest! That’s the nature of age cut offs. I was also the youngest in school and have a PhD

I agree. If it was utter madness there wouldnt be an option for starting school at that age. I worry slightly about her finishing school at 17 but not enough for me to put off starting P1. Maybe I feel differently because she is 6 years younger than her older siblings so she is very used to being the youngest and ‘keeping up’ with the big kids. She will be reading and writing before she starts school because she’s the kind of kid that soaks up everything. It helps that the primary she will go to is brilliant and I know they do everything they can to support all children.

I think because so many babies are put into "nursery" before 1 years old it can feel like an eternity before they start school, and so many parents are blindsighted by this.
Any parent that starts their child at nursery at the developmentally correct age of 3 years old will have a more objective approach to the school starting age, and will likely see deferring as a positive step, because they haven't burnt themselves out early in a nursery setting.

@Confusionn I don't even think it's that.
I think it's the idea of defer because everyone else does, don't want them to be the youngest. The advantage of being the oldest is gone by about P3 or at least I read that somewhere at the time.

Statements like 'nobody regrets' well few are going to fess up 'we boobed' and its not such a huge decision when your only weeks from the cut off. But 6 months from the cut of is a different issue.

I'll defend my decision I used the information I had at the time but I'm not convinced it was the right decision. And a lot of the time he played with kids older than him.

I felt things in P1 / P2 were presented in too babyish a way. And that was before the move to play based learning
He came home one day towards the end of P1 all excited with a picture book 'for my baby brother'. The book was ment for him! And I think that summed the whole thing up.

P5 before we got a decent school report saying he was engaged in school!

I do wonder where all the funding for the extra year at nursery is coming from. It also seems totally unfair as a child with an end of august birthday can now have 3 full years (12 terms) at nursery and be in the same class as a child who had 5 terms (January/ February birthday) just because their parents wanted them to have an advantage.

There are now also Facebook groups for older deferrals and although these remain rare, more and more parents are pushing for these so you can now have some March to August birthdays deferred as well.

I don’t think the comparison to Scandinavian countries is helpful as they have a totally different system. For a start they have much smaller ratios of children to staff and kindergarten teachers. I saw data from Finland that explained that by the time a child started kindergarten, 30% were precocious readers and another 43% were emergent readers so it’s rare that children start school with no reading skills. The languages are also much more logical than English and children can learn to decode and learn to read very quickly unlike here where it typically takes years as it’s much more complicated.

@Tessiebeare fairly obviously the money is coming out the education budget.

Has the Education Act of 1873 been repealed? If my memory is correct that says children must be in school by the August they turn 5.

I have consider that too that English is a complicated illogical language to learn.

I'm dyslexic which maybe doesn't help but I remember the day I asked a colleague how to spell "live" as in, Live performance, I was writing it correctly but reading it back as live as in "live life to fullest". 🤯

@Needanewname42

Nothing to do with better or brighter. That's not the motivation. It's about mental health, emotional regulation and social skills.

I'm currently teaching classes where there are now more than 50% of children with ASN. A true kindergarten stage with its reduced pupil/staff ratio is the way forward. We cannot keep doing the same and expect anything to change. Returning teachers to the nursery and returning ECPs to P1/P2 is part of that path.