How disastrous is missing reception year?

[scotlandmamatoone]

DH and I are currently living in Scotland with our very nearly 2 (late august birthday) year old. In Scotland, she would start school school in August 2028 in 3 years time.

However, we plan to move to England in spring / summer 2028. In England, she would have been due to start school in September 2027. Due to an ongoing work contract, there is really no way of moving to England ready for her to start school then.

This means, when we move, she will be ready to go straight into year 1 (or perhaps if we're able to, to have a few weeks of reception?). I have heard that deferral is possible but have also heard from people that this means she'll miss a year of education down the line(?) and also that deferral might not be accepted if not applied for when she was initially due to start school - but obviously we won't have a house to apply from at this point!

I'm feeling a bit worried about it all. Currently she is potty trained, has very advanced language skills (not a brag, just some background) and is very comfortable at nursery, but obviously at not yet 2 it is very very difficult to predict how school ready she'll be and how detrimental missing a reception year would be! Does anyone have any similar experience? I know absolutely nothing about schools and hadn't really anticipated having to think about it so soon .

That's an interesting view, on what basis should we trust you?

I’m in Scotland and I don’t think they do formalised learning like you’re talking about in nursery. It’s very play based with bits of learning. But honestly p1 is more play based too so I think it might all start a little bit later in general.

I definitely don't think I can replace a whole reception education (or the socialisation!)

Your dd will socialise with other kids at nursery or pre-school in Scotland. You don't need to worry about that

I really wouldn’t worry about it. Enjoy the time you have in Scotland and seek the advice of the school you will be moving to nearer the time. Children adjust well at that age, as long as you are moving at your child’s pace with learning and they get to go out and meet other children they will be absolutely fine.

I had the same dilemma 15 years ago! As the Scottish system is half day play based nursery (or at least was) it was too big for us to move at this point. We could say no to the move and stayed put at that point.

Could you stay up in Scotland for a year as it is the basics of learning to read and settle in the classroom that is important. I feel P2 to year 2 would be a lot smoother.

I wouldn’t worry too much as long as your dd is in a preschool during that year.

You can probably teach most of the phonics and handwriting yourself if you do half an hour in the morning and half an hour at night. Basic counting and “adding 1 more” would also help.

My ds didn’t learn much in Reception - just the basic building blocks of phonics and counting and forming letters. But year 1 was immediately quite a big jump straight into learning cursive joins for example in writing and much more actual teaching and class work rather than play-based.

To me this is a no brainer if she’s a summer baby.

just let her join reception when you move to England. She will be one of the oldest in the year, which is a benefit. Remember, she will only be measured against her cohort when it comes to exams- she won’t be ‘behind’ if you do this.

Writing sentences, reading and doing simple calculations? By the end of
Reception?

Sure, most of them will be able to write their own name and a few other words, know their basic colours, read out loud the very simplest of sentences, and be able to add two single numbers together. On the other hand, some of them will still be struggling to recognise their own shoes, let alone put them on the right feet.

I would look at her carefully compared with others the same age before deciding to defer a year. I do know August born children who have deferred and it’s been good for them; however they were children who were academically and/or socially not ready. To defer and then be in a classroom for the rest of your school life with many children nearly a year younger than you is as problematic for some children as those who are v young for their year and in a classroom with children much older.

At two this is difficult to judge as she is still so tiny. But as she gets older I would watch:

• how well she problem solves compares to others same age
• how independent is she: can she manage things like putting her own clothes on, getting her own drink, getting and opening her own snack
• her emotional intelligence compared to other children. Can she empathise with how another child might be feeling, does she play well with peers, can she share
• her resilience. Can she perservere with difficult tasks, does she get upset and angry quickly when she can’t do something
• how much she likes learning. Is she interested in learning letters and numbers
• her attention span compared to other kids

As she gets older her nursery reports will be able to give you a good insight into whether holding her back a year or not would be a good thing.

My three are have not long gone through Reception, and the content they are taught is predominantly reading, maths and writing. From what I can see looking at my children and their friends, Ideally your child will start year 1:

• being able to read books that have a couple of short sentences per page. Perhaps 10 words per page.
• know their numbers up to 20, able to know what plus one and minus one is, and count up in twos. Understand a number line and be able to add and subtract 1 and 2 using it
• able to hold a pencil with proper pencil grip, and write all their letters in non joined up writing. Be able to write some v short sentences with the spelling of the words being incorrect but making sense by phonetic rules (ie spelling “bed” right but spelling “mummy” “mumee”)

Of course not all children will go into Y1 being able to do all this (and some will go in being able to do much more) but this is an average level.

Most of England uses the phonics system to teach reading. I’m sure there are ways you could teach this at home esp if she is interested. Like an online programme perhaps? Children are not expected to have grasped all the phonics rules until year 2 I don’t think, my daughter is def still learning some of the trickier diagraphs and trigraphs.

if your child is gojng to nursery in Scotland then she may be learning some of the above in her final yr of nursery. And she will be learning all the other things that reception teaches children: dealing with being away from parents, listening and following rules, socialising properly with other children, etc etc.

if she wasn’t in nursery I would say missing reception may be tricky. But seeing as she is, I would do full time hours for that year where she would be in reception in England, and try to teach her phonics and maths at home

It's not a no brainer though, schools don't necessarily allow it - you have a right to defer summer borns, but you don't have an automatic right to join reception. In the town I live in 3 our of 4 primary schools give a hard no to deferring and joining reception. The one that allows it is the school nobody wants to go to. Similarly, if you live in a grammar school areas, it can be problematic to get a place if you are out of your "usual" age bracket

Thank you all, lots of really detailed responses that are very helpful.

@Gagamama2 this is really helpful and something teacher friends have alluded to. Of course it is hard to judge now but currently she is a long way ahead of most of her peers in terms of developing independence, language, problem solving, 'emotional intelligence' (as much as they can have at 2!), interest in learning, awareness of letters and numbers etc. Of course I really don't want to sound like I'm bragging and I'm very well aware that this could change a lot in the next few years but I don't want her to one day resent me for holding her back. But on the flip side she'd be maybe 2 weeks older than the oldest children in her class, so I guess it would really depend on the composition of the year group..

@JamesWebbSpaceTelescope that is a really helpful suggestion. It is something we had considered and will consider further. I wasn't sure whether letting her settle and then moving her would be even more disruptive.

This really surprises me. Maybe you work in an LA which is particularly resistant to CSA reception starts? In my child's class at least 4 summer born children (including mine who is June born) started Reception a year later, only 1 of whom has significant special needs. This isn't unusual in the school. I also know of children who have moved down a year just because they weren't keeping up. Personally I can't see the disadvantage of a more fluid system, it seems to work fine at our school anyway.

Deferring isn’t ideal, but it is preferable to missing a the reception year. The jump
in expectations between reception and Y1 is already huge, and to go from nursery to y1 would be a challenging transition for any child. Of course some would cope with it but more others would struggle.

In Scotland children go from preschool to primary 1 I don’t see why it would be an issue to go from preschool to year 1 in England. Will you definitely be moving back to England a lot can change in 3 years I wouldn’t panic too much about it just now x

I should also add most teachers in Scotland seem to encourage deferring far more than not if your child was to start at p1 at 4 instead of 5. We really are transitioning more to a Norway style early years schooling here. My kids school does play based learning up until 7/end of p2 now.

I think if she is already a long way ahead of her peers then she might end up bored and frustrated being held back and then in a year below where she should be. My daughter was like that at two, and now at 7 finds the emotional lack of intelligence amongst her friends hard. Many of the friends and cousins she has outside of school are 8 / 9 / 10 instead of 7, and she finds the girls in the year below her hard to get on with not because they aren’t nice girls but because they are so babyish. She was at a school where they mix year groups so has been in classes with both the year below her, and the year above her, at different points. If she had to be in the same class as the girls in the year below for the whole of primary it would have been a disaster. She is moving now into a big junior school which doesn’t need to mix year groups.

exactly the opposite for my adhd son though who struggles with resilience and does better mixed with the year below as it boosts his confidence

Because reception in England has a lot more structured learning - phonics, reading, writing, number skills.

In Scotland it is (or at least was but I think still is) half days of learning through play.

Going into p1 is very different from going into y1. In y1 the majority of students will be reading and writing.

Missing reception means missing out on the fundamentals and being behind all her peers.

See how she’s doing in another year. If she’s comparing well against reception goals and standards and has socialized well in full time nursery then I’d not worry about skipping reception.

My DD went to the equivalent of primary school in the US. They didn’t start school until 5 and even then it was only for half a day. It meant they didn’t start really learning to read and write consistently until they were 6 in first grade.

All that meant was a huge learning jump happened in grade two at seven years old.

It felt as though she went from sounding out words to reading chapter books like Harry Potter within a space of six months.

There’s a reason the Scandinavian schools often don’t get serious about academics until age 7.

Put an average kid from the UK, the US and Norway in a room together at 13 and it won’t be obvious that they all started school at different ages.

Caveat for children who need extra help for academic or social needs. But only you will be able to judge that for your DD.

Preschool is whatever hours you chose it to be but if you put them to the preschool attached to the school most do 9-3 /school hours. However like I say in Scotland they wouldnt be sitting down at a desk all day until p3 age 7+ or later.

But the OP’s concerns are centred around whether or not deferring is a good idea. Educationally, it’s a no brainer. being the oldest in the year is an advantage.

And the grammar school issue shouldn’t affect a summer baby.

these problems are very much based on geography. We don’t know where the OP is moving to in England. In central areas of London, they don’t have enough kids, so you can take your pick of excellent schools.

She sounds like my older DD at that age. My DD was born in early September. We had to move her nursery at 2.5 because they started to split them by academic year and she stopped mixing with older children, who felt much more like her peers. I even had other nursery parents ask me why she hadn't moved up when she seemed to be further ahead than their children.

Because she was a September baby, we couldn't get her into the year above, so she was like a late August baby who had deferred. The year before she started school, the nursery staff kept forgetting she wasn't going to school and had another year at nursery.

The nursery did their best with her for that year, she spent a lot of time chatting to staff and was allowed to help show parents round the nursery. She did really well in reception and throughout primary school. Teachers did always comment on her maturity, but I suspect they would have said that even if she was in the year above.

It's really not done her any harm to be the oldest in the school year. I think I would have sent her to school a year earlier if that was an option, because she was ready and nursery cost £1k a month at the time. But I definitely wouldn't have skipped reception as the jump from nursery to formal learning in year 1 is huge.

Scottish Mum here and I can tell you that pre-school in Scotland will definitely not teach numeracy and literacy in the same way that reception year in England does and that's very deliberate. There is a big movement here towards play-based learning and that applies in most pre-schools and is increasingly being rolled out in Primaries 1-3. There's loads of research showing the benefits of a delaying formal schooling. In Scotland we've also now got an automatic right to defer any child who is still 4 on the first day of summer term so that they start the following year and that's becoming increasingly common too. That means if your little one is born in the second half of August she could wait to start P1 in August 2029, and you'd be entitled to an extra year of pre-school funding.

The culture is obviously quite different in England where formal schooling starts much earlier. If I were you I'd make the best of both worlds and let your little one finish pre-school in Scotland and then start in reception after you move. It sounds like you have the right to do that (worth double checking with the LEA where you will be moving too!) and it would certainly be most appropriate educationally given that she won't have the basics of literacy and numeracy that the kids going into the year above reception will have.

But you won't be the eldest in the year in schools where they insist that deferred kids start in Yr1?

You don’t work in reception then!

Knowing a few colours is what a 2 or 3 year old could do not a 5 year old! Getting confused over shoes is common but lots of getting themselves dressed should mean by the end of reception they can get themselves dressed, including shoes.

Oh and kids aged 3-5 in Scotland are now entitled to 6 hours per day in pre-school during term time. That's been the case since 2020.