Children start school at 5, oh no they don't

[Sadworld23]

We should stop taking about children starting school in the UK at 5.
Whilst that may be the legal age, even Gov.uk says most parents send their child to reception class at 4.

This makes me sad tbh, bc our child is (generally) happy at his nursery, 7m-3y, and I can't see him being ready for school at 4y.
He's barely out of nappies and bottles and I'm already choosing a school for him. And that's without the worries of sorting wrap around childcare to make my work hours work.

I had considered holding him back but nursery are already calculating giving up his place.

YABU children don't really start school til 5y.
YANBU children start school at 4y.

I can't see any comments about funding so apologies if I've missed it. In Wales if you're claiming free nursery hours the funding stops once your child is eligible for school. This makes a big difference to many.

Children in England start school the academic year they turn 5. That is a fact.

The school day is shorter than a typical nursery day where babies might be left from 7am until 6pm. How is the school day worse for a 4/5 year old?

Why is it just tour working day that needs to be changed to accommodate a shorter day for the child, and not the child’s father?

We have a different system in Scotland (we don’t do reception year) so depending on your child’s birthday they can essentially start when they’re about to turn 6 (this doesn’t affect their funding) but they can be in alongside children who have yet to turn 5, so there can be huge discrepancies in age which is hard. As an early years teacher of many many years I could not be a bigger advocate of deferral. I’ve never once taught a child who I thought ‘oh you should’ve come to school a year earlier’ but every year I teach many who struggle so much in their first few years, for no other reason than they’re so young and just aren’t ready. It’s so hard for them and their parents when their birth date eliminates an element of choice. Children start school far too young in this country, we need to look more at the Scandinavian country models of education who are doing it so much better than us. Also, nothing makes me 🙄🙄🙄 more than parents saying their 4 year old is ‘bored’ by nursery and ‘needs’ to start school. They’re 4, they really don’t.

DS is 3.5 and has started at school this Sept. Live in france, school compulsory year they turn three. Can’t speak for all the kids as I don’t know them but DS is ready and enjoying it. There’s one child who is 2 in his class, about to turn 3, I think it’s a bit young for him tbh but I think from 3.5 they can manage quite well. It does mean you have to get them ready earlier, but I get the impression from mn that potty training in England happens later; here they like to begin at 2 sharpish.

Mine are winter born, but they were definitely ready when they started school aged 4. They mostly just played all day.
Their nursery had already started a bit of phonics with them.

We used to have this in Scotland and funding a deferral would only be considered for children in special circumstances such as SEN or medical trauma etc, but they eliminated that a few years ago and at our school we’ve steadily seen a rise in deferral children coming in and the difference is amazing.

My chap was is the oldest in his class. He was 5 years 10 months. He did get a concession as he has SEN but its worked out brilliantly for him.

😂

But they will have been in preschool from the age of two, pre schools that have an almost identical style to Englands reception and KS1. If our daughter did nothing and entered school at six here in Sweden she would be very behind academically.

I'm in Finland. Nursery is definitely nothing like year 1. Preschool (the year they turn 6) would be similar to Reception though, as that's when they start learning the alphabet and pre-reading skills, with about one teaching hour (45 minutes) of sit down learning time a day. The later years of nursery have a bit more intentional learning through play so like EYFS I think but no equivalent to phonics, the only literacy is story time (except for children like DS who have Finnish as a second language, he spent a bit of time each day doing work on that)

That's a bit misleading. Everything is set up for your child to start the September after they turn 4. Decades ago, I started school a few days after my 4th birthday, that is still the norm for an August birthday.

My Dsis recently held back my August born nephew until the next year and she was discouraged from doing so by the school; they certainly felt it was unusual and unnecessary. DN also lost funding for his nursery. Sending children at 4, is really not early, the system is set up to make it difficult to do anything else. Children don't legally have to be at school until the term after they're 5, but short of squeezing in a term time holiday without getting fined, it doesn't mean much in reality. The school will still not be happy about it.

Reception is fine for 4YOs IME. The problem comes in year 1 for an only just 5 YO. Year 1 needs a major rethink. My younger DCs both really struggled and were very unhappy in year 1 (and 'failing').

4 is so young to start school OP. My DS definitely would not have coped and would have been labelled with learning difficulties but by the time he was 6 and started preschool in Finland he was ready to learn.

The problem with “Oh it’s Reception, it’s play based” is that Y1 is not play based. Y2 is not play based and so on. I am in favour of deferral. And I’m one of those lunatics who tried for Autumn babies partly with this in mind.

My August born daughter started a year late due to health reasons. I then had a big fight when she got to secondary age as they wanted her to miss year 7 and go straight to year 8. They said they would have expected her to make up the year during Primary.
During the reception year they will build on what they have learnt in the Autumn term in the Spring and Summer term so starting late may have its disadvantages.
Go on open session for your catchment school and any others that you think you might get in. You will get a better feel for them and how the days are structured.

Move to Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 you can defer until they are 5 years 11s month now and the free funding continues at nursery until then. As you can defer from Sept bdays now!

Stop assuming we're all living under the English system.

Yes. My daughter went to school at 4 and a half. She was well able, cognitively but I worried about her emotional readiness. She cried for her nursery the first few days.After that she settled in and absolutely thrived.

This. Some kids are really ready- I know on mn everyone thinks UK starts sooo early but my kids were so ready for school when they started! They still did loads of play both in and out of school so I don’t see the issue at all!

This. My DD is September-born and has just turned 5 and started school. She was really upset last year when her preschool friends started school and she didn't. She's been ready for at least 9 months and it's been really hard work. She went off so happily when she started at last.

DD has just started reception at 4 years old and she was so ready for school, she loves it, they play and have stories and she’s making friends. Don’t hold your child back from their peers, the friends they make in reception will be their friends through primary school and possibly for life.

My son will be 5 at the end of this month and will start school in August 2026. So he will be almost 6 then. It's different here in Scotland, if your child is still 4 years old when the August term starts they can go to nursery for another year. Great system.

If parents are pushing potty training and other such developmental milestones later and later, no wonder they are uncomfortable with the idea of school at 4. English schools at 4 are absolutely fine and for most children, not an issue at all. I think by far the biggest issue is parents- there are some children who benefit from starting outside of their year, but the increasing number of parents delaying starts because of generalised fretting is not sustainable.

If it’s a real issue, then just move the cut off to 1st March, so children are 4yrs 6 months when they start.

it’s tough when looking at your toddler to picture them as an adult/nearly adult, but to allow for parents doing as suggested here and deferring starting school for a year, the state pays for you to be educated up to the end of the year you turn 19. (So if you do defer a year and go into reception, your dc can still do year 13). The down side is by using this extra year at the start of education, you don’t have it to play with at the end. Lots of students start year 12 /A levels and then repeat that year with different subjects or a different 2 year qualification. Some repeat with the same subjects. If your dc fails their GCSEs, it allows them to do one year on a lower level qualification, then do a 2 year course that’s level 3 qualification (A levels are classed as level 3 for reference).

Most young people don’t need this extra year at key stage 5, but worth factoring in you are taking away some flexibility at the end of their education if you use the year now.

Also if you might use a selective school for secondary, check they’d be happy with your child taking the 11+ in year 6 when their date of birth would normally put them in year 7.

I’m pretty sure it’s been this way for a long time… I’m 61, but I started school before my 5th birthday. I’m a September baby, but I’m certain I started in the term before my 5th birthday. Unfortunately , I have no-one to check with now…

My 3 were all 4 and a half when they started. I have two Summer borns and a New Year one. It’s never done them any harm, although I was worried my youngest wasn’t going to be out of pull-ups and would have to delay his start! Fortunately, he just suddenly stopped needing them over the Christmas holiday and could start as planned!

My daughter turned 4 on the 26th of August and started school 10 days later. I wanted to hold her back but her dad insisted.
She's been lagging behind the other kids. She is, however, being monitored by the school nurse for her size (concerned about precocious puberty) and had she been the oldest in a class the size difference might have been even larger and made her uncomfortable in other ways.
Someone is always going to be the oldest, someone is always going to be the youngest.