to ask for ds to be put in year 5 aged 10 cos of move

[Ceci03]

DS is 11 in July. Im in the process of moving to the uk and he should be going into year 6, nd then to secondary in septemeber. would he be very out of place to go into year 5 now, and then have a whole year 6 before going to secondary? would he be very old in the class. thx.

I’m not sure how likely the council would let you if he’s year 6 now.

Unless you can find a private school will to do so in its junior/prep and transfer to secondary a year out of sync you are unlikely to succeed. State schools in England will say no.

So you want him to start secondary aged 12. And not leave until he is a year older than his peers. Unless there is a very good reason, I'm not sure this is a very good idea.

I’d be more concerned about your applications for secondary! That’s what you should be checking with the council.

As PP's have said, this isn't usually allowed.
In England you have to take the year 6 sats with your correct year group or are seen to have an advantage.
You can skip years or resit eariler in the school, but would be made to join your original year group before SATS.
E.g, if you resit year 3, you have to miss a year further on to get back into the correct cohort for year 6. If you skip a year and go from year 3 to 5, you have to sit year 5 twice so you are with the correct cohort for yr 6.

It’s unlikely you’ll find a state primary to agree to that, it’s very unlikely you’ll fine a state secondary to agree, plus state funding for education finishes at 18, so he wouldn’t be able to complete his final year at school as he’d be too old. You might manage to get a private school to agree though.

Other countries make moving between the years easy, the uk doesn’t. You can ask but I would expect it to be turned down. It’d cause issues at secondary as you can’t be in a secondary school after the academic year in which you turn 16, you have to be in the 6th form or at a college.

Uk is only just getting to grips with late entry to school and currently if you enter late you go straight in at the year group you should have been in, you don’t stay a year behind.

I'm tagging a couple of admissions people @admissions @prh47bridge

As he is July birthday he is 'young in year' and if he were starting primary you would now be able to at least request they consider he started a year later.

I have no idea whether that could make a difference, though I suspect not.

Do you have any academic reasons for delaying e.g.
Non English speaker
School starts later in current country so 'not up to standard' in maths

Just to expand my point on Secondary, apologies if you already know... the application date for people in the area will have passed. You need to speak admissions ASAP (google your town name and ‘school admissions’ should do it) and discuss their process now - don’t run the risk of applying only after places are allocated.

Barkandcheese is not quite correct, level 3 (A level/IB/btec etc) and below courses are funded until 19. League tables reflect gcse qualifications taken in year 11 with peer group.

Sorry, I was wrong about that.

My daughter is in year 11, and one of her friends is a year older than the others. She went into a year lower when she moved from Ireland. We live in Wales.

@hidinginthenightgarden your post is incorrect. Summer borns who starts reception at five stay in the same cohort all the way to year 13.

It’d cause issues at secondary as you can’t be in a secondary school after the academic year in which you turn 16, you have to be in the 6th form or at a college.
No , plenty of summer borns who defer reception are in this situation.

We had a girl join the year-group one behind her actual age when she and her family came to live in the UK, this was 10 years ago and a CofE state primary in England. Otherwise she would have had one term of year six and then into secondary. Safely into University now!

The weirdest bit was when it was her birthday, we'd never had a 12 at weekly celebration assembly before.

In other words - worth asking.

But summer-borns have only been allowed to defer Reception for the last couple of years, so won't be old enough to have gone through the system/ know about 6th Form College.

@hidinginthenightgarden, you do realise that you don't have to do SATS, a child can happily skip off to secondary school without them.

Thanks to TeenTimesTwo for drawing this to my attention.

Summer borns who starts reception at five stay in the same cohort all the way to year 13

I'm afraid this is not always true.

Ceci03

It is up to the school (and possibly also the local authority depending on the type of school) whether or not to allow your child to go into Y5. They must look at what is in his best interests rather than operating a blanket policy. However, many will only allow him to go into the "wrong" year if there is evidence of developmental delay. You can certainly ask but you may not get the answer you want.

If your son is allowed to go into Y5 you need to check what will happen on transfer to secondary school. Whilst he should stay with the same cohort, some schools insist on moving the child into the "correct" year, which would mean him missing Y7 completely.

@hidinginthenightgarden is this a new rule? It wasn't the case when I was at school in the 90s/00s.

We did this - long story about why - but to summarise our son has just turned 13 and is in year 7 at secondary school. It's been of no detrimental effect to him. The primary school were very helpful with our application.

I used to teach in England (11-16 state secondary schools) and we had a girl from Thailand join in year 9 instead of year 10. She had almost no English and joined a school with very few non local children (by contrast I taught in a school with very high ESL numbers and they were all in their age determined school year even if they had no English on arrival).

Its not impossible but it's down to the school, and probably more likely if your child needs to catch up due to a different school system or has little or no English and is joining a school where this is unusual.

My friend was a twin, her twin was in the yeargroup below us as he'd had illness as a baby so started a year later than she did.

Even if you get consent for this from the primary. I would make sure you approach secondary schools and are sure they'd allow him to remain in his adopted cohort - some would force him to skip a year. BE aware also if you move different secondary in the future they could force him to skip a year.

It depends on your reason for wanting to do it

It depends on the school and your reasons for requesting it. At DS' school, there are DCs who are up to two years older than the main cohort because of extenuating circumstances eg illness.