wrong age for school year

[biro196]

our son is a late august birthday. he was struggling at state school so we moved him to a private school where he was allowed to repeat a year. he is now happily in year 4 at the perfect academic level aothough (by state school guidance) he should be in year 5.
We think he is ready to go back into the state system, but would want him to go back in his current year, not skip up a year. Can state schools accept him in his current year even though it is not his 'correct' year by their normal age system?

It is a bit of a post code lottery some authorities accept this and others won't.
I had a child move from another authority out of school year and it became an issue when they were due by age to move to secondary but were just entering Y6. Due to SEN statement they were allowed to continue in primary but were then required to skip Y7 when they did transfer.

I had something similar, a girl in yr 6 who should have been in Yr 7, she too had to go into yr 8 when entering secondary ( which I felt caused additional problems as she was then also socially behind her peers as well as the academic problems which had held her back originally)

By law, the LA is required to consider each case on its individual merits and cannot have a blanket policy requiring children to be kept with their age peers.

In practice, of course some are far more open to this practice than others are.

thank you all. i have now looked at out LA guidelines which state that with reports etc it has to be proved to be a 'permanent, settled' situation. Our son has been thriving in the 'wrong' year for 3 years now so will take all your advice talk to eveyone and keep my fingers crossed! :)