Has anyone deferred starting primary school in the UK?

[Foreverexhausted]

I have a Summer born child who really isn't ready to start school in September. We attend activities and classes etc but she struggled to settle in to nursery to the point we were advised to remove her as it was making her physically ill. I really do think the extra year will make a difference, emotionally she just isn't ready.

Has anyone else deferred and are you glad you did or do you regret it and why?

Thanks.

Yes, and I’m glad we did. He’s much more ready now.

Whats why did you defer?

He was emotionally more immature than his friends, physically much smaller, not fully potty trained, and the Headteacher agreed with me that there was no benefit to starting school aged 4 and 1 week.

Thanks Whats I'm glad you made the right decision and its worked out for you.

We deferred ds(15) so he started p1 (Scotland) at 5.5 yrs old. No real reason, nursery said he was more than ready. We had the option to defer and it felt right so did it.

Never regretted it and he has had a really good run at school. He is just starting S4 now, exams next year. 1/2 the boys in his 2004 footie team are doing their exams now and are struggling, looking at ds now I'm glad he's got that extra year to mature.

I hope you don't mind me following your thread OP, I'm thinking of deffering my DS but I don't know anyone in RL who has deffered their summer borns.

We deferred (Scotland) both of our Feb born children. Best thing we could’ve done. They were both just a bit too immature at 4.5. We’ve had zero issues.

I was going to do this before we moved to scotland. No way was my son starting school at 4 and a couple of weeks old. Madness!

If anyone wants advice join flexible school admissions for summerborns on Facebook. An amazing resource for people considering doing this.

I’m going to defer my Feb born. She has no issues, she’s probably more advanced than some children her age but I don’t like the idea of her going to school at 4.5. Her birthday is only one week from the cut off point.

Yes we've done it with two summer born children and it was the right thing for both. No SEN just not emotionally and socially ready for full time education aged only just 4 - and bear in mind that while Reception is very play based, when they go up to year 1 its a big step up. My oldest is in year 2 now and absolutely no regrets. She's very bright (of course I'm not biased ) but this hasn't held her back at all.

You will get a lot of people on here disagreeing and saying it's unfair, someone has to be the youngest, I was an August baby and I was top of the class etc but none of that matters - only consider what's right for your child in your circumstances. They have the rest of their lives for heir education, in these years when they're 4 and 5 years old, they're still so little and a year makes a huge difference in development - the difference between coping and thriving.

Look up the Summerborn campaign website and Facebook group (group is called something like Flexible Schooling for summerborn children) for lots of helpful advice on pros and cons and how to go about it.

Yes deferred for a reception start at compulsory school age partly due to emotional and social maturity, partly due to pressure on children in Y2, Y6, GCSEs etc.

I deferred my summerborn boy. He has really enjoyed his first year at school so far and I'm sure that it would have been different story last year. My son does have SEN and growth issues - despite being the eldest child in Reception he is the smallest boy.

I have 3 summer children and honestly although they are all ok I really wish I had deferred them all. My eldest found it hard to catch up with the reading, my 2nd was not emotionally ready and struggled with tears still does though even in yr2 and my reception child hasn't grasped why she is being made to do spellings and reading ect and finds the pressure tough. If in any doubt just do it.

my friend did but her DD has to make the lost year up by skipping a class later on (I think it was still at primary). she actually regretted the deferral as her DD really struggled with skipping a year.

I did. And very happy about it. It is a bit of a minefield but certainly possible. There is a brilliant Facebook group that I found very useful: Flexible School admissions for Summer Borns.

I'm an August baby. Look ahead too, do you think your 18 year old will want to be heading back to school for another year when his contemporaries are heading to university? You catch up, several of my good friends have summer born kids and have done very well at secondary school

As a Senco, we have several children starting Reception with us in September who deferred from last year. The parents just wrote a letter to the LEA giving their reasons and we were asked if we would accept them as a deferred place.

And note the DfE Advice on summer borns is only from 2014 so experiences from others before that are not the same. They cannot make you skip a year later unless that is at that time in the best interest of your child. A very very hard case to make! And most secondaries would rather eat their left arm than have a child skip a year as it affects their results if they have a Y6 educated child go straight into Y8!

I'm an August baby. Look ahead too, do you think your 18 year old will want to be heading back to school for another year when his contemporaries are heading to university?
His contemporaries will be heading back to year 13 as they will be his classmates.

I looked into this for my August born son - I was worried to read that secondary schools may not accept a deferred place & may require the child to be placed in their "correct" year group when transferring.
Fortunately for us, my son was ready for reception aged 4 +1 week and has since thrived. I know this is not the case for everyone - just do your research carefully

Following with interest.

Hi OP. I have a July born dd, she’s now 11, but we deferred her just for 6 months, so instead of starting in September, she started the following Jan on a part time basis, so she finished at 12 for the first few months.

Despite various people saying ‘oh you shouldn’t, she will find it hard to make friends’ etc etc, it was the best thing we did.

She just wasn’t emotionally ready and we found introducing her slowly made her confidence grow she wasn’t behind in making friends, she was very much included.

I’m not sure if your school would consider a slow introduction to school, but as I say, it was the best thing we ever did.

It's a tough one, I think as time goes on more and more families will opt for this, or they'll be a proper government plan and not so ad hoc as it is now. The problem is, they'll either be older than everyone else or the youngest. I can see how being older when they are little would work well but going into senior school I can see it being a bit more difficult. Good luck whatever you decide to do.

Don't they still have to join the rest of their cohort at some point? Ie they aren't always a year behind are they?

And ‘contemporaries’ is very relative. The August 2016 born is closer in age/maturity to the September 2016 born than to the September 2015 born. And when a teenager I am sure it is fine to be the first to be able to have a drink or the first to drive. Most countries don’t have such rigid cohorts for schools - and kids with much larger age differences do perfectly fine in one class.