Is it possible to defer entry to secondary for summer born?

[Echobelly]

This is beyond even theoretical at the moment, but I've been thinking about this, as we may just have enough money to manage if possible...

DS, now coming to end of Y2, is August born, and not mature for his age on a number of levels and though bright us still struggling a lot with even basic maths, for example. We missed out by just one year the opportunity to defer start to Reception, which would have been ideal for him had it been an option.

I realise he is still pretty little and may yet catch up, but if he gets to the end of primary and really doesn't seem to have gained ground, would it be theoretically possible (if we can afford it) to have him privately tutored at home for one year to catch up a bit and then start him in Y7 at secondary after his 12th birthday? Or is the LA likely to insist he can only go into Y8 if we were to do that?

You are getting way ahead of yourself here. He'll catch up

I hope so - I guess I'm only thinking about it now as DH wants to put DD (10) in for a scholarship at a private school and I very much doubt we'll get a full one as, while we couldn't afford full fees, we'll probably be considered not eligible to get it paid in full either. DH says he thinks he can see a way to pay up to 50%; I think that'd be a real scrape for us, especially as he's freelance. Also it's problematic as we could only afford that for DD, and I'd rather not take it up, but I may need a good positive reason to argue against it if DH really sets his heart on laying out for it - and one such might be that money might be better spent on supporting DS who looks like needing more help with his education.

So that's why I'm wondering now whether it might be a possibility.

Admissions authorities can make their own decisions on this and it is possible to get secondary children admitted out of year, but you would need strong evidence of his needs and would need to start the conversation early. Unfortunately each AA will approach this differently so you will have no idea how easy or hard it might be until you talk to them!

Private schools tend to be more flexible.

I would say highly unlikely. Mainly due to the end of secondary. Having a student that can drive alongside those that can't etc.

He will catch up. Help him at home too. The most important aspect of school is social.

If you know he is struggling you don't need to pay for tuition at this age. Plenty of counting etc will help.

One of my friends got the school to agree to have her August DS repeat Y2 at our local village school. He'd been in a mixed age class so it wasn't obvious and it was definitely the right fit for him.

Have you spoken to the school about this as an option?

Also, just to let you know, Scottish birthdates are different and officially the state school runs from 1st of February and parents are allowed to defer December/January/February children from starting P1 (effectively Reception). This is only for those starting school but it does mean that if you were to move to Scotland, your DS would be in the middle of the year rather than the youngest. As he's Y2 now, he would be P2 going into P3 in the middle of August but primary in Scotland goes up to P7 (Y6) so he also 'gains' a year.

Plus... if you need any more selling points (!) Scottish independent schools tend to be cheaper than English ones.

Re the arguing against putting only one child in private school- the only argument you need is that it would be damaging and wrong to play favourites like that

It is incredibly unlikely that you would be able to defer.
He's only in year 2-he will be a different person next month, never mind in 4 year's time
You can't send one private and one not. And it would be utterly daft to go private unless you can easily afford it.

We spoke to school about repeating a year after Y1 but they wouldn't do it and preferred to just keep working at the weak points.

DH is also not necessarily comfortable about sending one child privately part-paid if we can't send the other, so it's not a foregone conclusion - it's just he has this look in his eye when he talks about it (I can tell this after 11 years of marriage!) that he really wants DD to go to this school if possible and when he has that look, it means he could get very attached to the idea. Again, it's pretty likely not to be an issue in the end as the chances are she won't get in due to sheer weight of competition, but it's just been playing on my mind.

It seems kind of unfair that secondaries wouldn't consider deferred admission as it's a point where you could have that time out without the possible air of humiliation of 'repeating a year' and kids driving a car etc should't be an issue - you can have kids who turn 12 on 1 September so they are 12 when they start school with 11 yos, so why should a kid who turned 12 a few weeks' earlier not join as well, and you'll start getting that anywhere once the first cohort of summer borns who were allowed to defer start secondary. But if that's how it is, that's how it is.

tubularfells - we're in London with all our wider family near at hand, so relocation is not on the cards!

I think that getting a child to repeat a year / deferring entry to secondary risks socially isolating them from their friends and the cohort they enter. Add that to sending their older sibling to private school and you have a very uneven situation which will undoubtedly lead to problems.

Obviously this is written from an American context but the basic truth of it is the same, your son is at an advantage going to school earlier than his peers not a disadvantage, he is likely to experience greater challenges and will almost certainly rise to the occasion in time.

I know everyone is saying that he will catch up but... that is what everyone said to us when we could see that our (July) DS was struggling. It turned out that he is severely dyslexic and while I'm not suggesting that your DS is, I do think you should trust your instincts and keep in close touch with his teachers and the school rather than wait for him to catch up.

I appreciate that he will always be dyslexic but I think that being the youngest in the class and dyslexic really knocked his confidence early on from which he hasn't recovered. Being in the year below would have given him a bit more breathing space.

KittyMcKitty - I'm not talking about deferring him a year and her going private, I'm saying that if she doesn't go private, we could maybe afford to give him a year's tutoring to catch up before starting secondary, although it doesn't sound like that's possible anyway!

DS has been tested for issues and isn't dyslexic, but was felt to maybe have a slight expressive language issue - he has a decent vocabulary but finds it hard to describe things or be specific about stuff. He struggles to understand anything to do with numbers, but comes out very strongly on non-verbal reasoning tests

Why cant you do weekly tutoring to top up school, as and when needed, rather than taking a whole year out to do it?

I think we may go that way - already thinking of handwriting tutoring, as that's what the school is most concerned about at the moment.

One suggestion specifically on handwriting I can give is to try a harder pencil. When I was in primary I had such awful handwriting until one day I brought a 3h pencil instead of the standard hb pencil and it improved my writing by a massive amount. I pressed too hard with the softer pencil. Once we were in secondary and allowed to write with pens the problem was entirely mitigated.

That's interesting - the school had (it may have changed in the last year) a 'pen license' policy where you only got to use a pen once your handwriting was good enough. DD was about the last to get hers, probably because they just gave up by the then and relented... and her handwriting did improve as soon as she switched to pen.

My main concern, and I guess the school's, re the handwriting is that he'll start KS2 next year and will be expected to write longer pieces of work. I almost had a breakdown when they were given homework to write out a recipe a few months back, as I thought it would take us weeks to get that done, and so I didn't do it as they don't tend to chase up homework if you miss it now and then, although this one they did actually chase up as they wanted to make a recipe book. We just found him the shortest recipe possible in the end!

Question - if it's so hard to defer entry to secondary, what's going to happen to all the increasing numbers of children who are deferring entry to primary? Will they have to skip a year somewhere later on?

When you defer entry to primary you almost always go straight into year 1.

When you defer entry to primary you almost always go straight into year 1

That is less true than it used to be. The situation varies from LA to LA (and from school to school within some LAs) but, in many LAs, it is now much easier to defer entry for a year and still go into Reception.

Question - if it's so hard to defer entry to secondary, what's going to happen to all the increasing numbers of children who are deferring entry to primary? Will they have to skip a year somewhere later on?

Unfortunately that is one of the risks with deferring entry to Reception. Some secondary schools will insist on returning the child to their "correct" year group, resulting in them missing either Y6 or Y7. This really needs a change to the Admissions Code to force secondary schools to keep pupils in the same year group as they were in primary school.

I know of several summer-born children near us who have deferred entry and gone into Reception a year 'late'. This seems to be happening more and more - maybe it's to do with our LA? Sounds like a looming problem when they all need to transfer to secondary! And it's particularly tricky around here because it's a grammar school area, and you can't take the 11+ a year late.

Yes, I mentioned in OP, DS missed the option to defer into Reception (rather than Y1) by a year frustratingly! They changed the rules the year after he entered so kids born after April (I think) could start in Reception a year later. I don't know what's going to happen at secondary - I assumed they'd just be moved on along with the cohort they started school with, but I guess that's still a number of years away.

my friends son also late august born but with many additional needs. school offered him to re do year 7 so he ended up oldest in year.

OP the reason I raised it is that, if there are quite a few deferred entry children applying for Y7 places when they 'should' be Y8, I don't see why you can't do the same - even if you haven't deferred at primary. Presumably it should work in the same way - ie, the secondary school should judge each case on its merits. Personally, in your situation I would be more worried about the other aspects of keeping your DS out of school for a year. Home educating (with or without a tutor) is a big step, and I'm guessing it might be harder for your DS to readjust into secondary school following a year at home.

prh47bridge if they changed the admissions code to force secondaries to keep children in the same year they were in at primary, what would happen with selective schools? I suspect you'd get an upsurge of parents deferring entry if it meant their children could sit the 11+ a year older.