Can my son study Year 10 at age 15?

[HongKongers]

Hi everyone, our family is planning to immigrate to the UK in next year summer.

My son is going to finish his Year 9 at age 15 (he will be age 15 in Jun 2021) in Hong Kong in July 2021. We hope he might continue his Year 10 study in the UK.

It is understood that, in general, students of age 15 will study Year 11 in the UK.
However, I would like to know, is it feasible for my son to study Year 10 on Sep 2021?
Thanks from Joanne

It is possible. We've done it, although within the UK not coming in from abroad.
My son changed schools at the end of year 10 and then dropped back a year and repeated year 10. It took a long time and a lot of back and forth to be allowed to do this. We really had to argue his case with the LEA that he would fail his exams if he stayed in the year group he should be in. Luckily his new headteacher was on our side, as was his HOY from his previous school.
He did a term of year 11 in his new school before being allowed to drop back and was then in his new year group for a matter of weeks before covid .

Witchend, really appreciate your information sharing
Definitely we would try to ask.

Some years ago when David Cameron was PM he made an announcement suggesting that parents of summer born children would have more opportunity to defer their child's education by a year properly - ie not go straight into Y1 but go into Reception and continue all the way through in that year group. To the best of my knowledge no legislation was passed in this area making it a risky option for parents to choose as different LEAs and schools have different attitudes towards it. I don't know anything about Hong Kong education, but if Y10 there is the same as Y10 here and GCSEs are taken at the end of Y11 then, in theory, it should be possible to argue that it would be wrong to deny your child the right to access Y10.

If all fails I think that it is possible to do a remarkably amount of catching up in a relatively short space of time.

Hi everyone, grateful for all those info.
@FredaFrogspawn,my son will be 15 at 2021 June.

I have a friend who moved to the U.K. from abroad when her son was midway through Y10. Son joined his normal Year group. (State school).
Issues were GCSE foreign language - this had to be dropped, as school didn’t teach the same language.
English texts were different- but son was keen and caught up at home.