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Original poster

Would you delay your May Born child by one year

189 replies

Worrier987 · 20/09/2023 14:34

I have a young child born in May and I keep thinking about delaying his school start to when he is 5 years old.
Has anyone got experience of this and was it difficult to do that ?

OP posts:
Bluelightbaby · 20/09/2023 19:07

My daughter was prem. due in the Oct but came end of aug. We didn’t hold her back and she thrived. She’s now at 6th form

may is definitely not an issue !

Bbq1 · 20/09/2023 19:37

I'm May born and was absolutely fine! Never felt disadvantaged by being a bit younger. You're being ridiculous, Op. My ds is September born so in reception he was almost a year older than his youngest peers. There was a slight difference in levels of maturity in reception but it quite quickly evens out.

purplecheesecat · 20/09/2023 19:46

He’s a perfectly normal age for the school year; unless he has SEN then deferring is ridiculous

HonoriaLucastaDelagardie · 20/09/2023 19:47

You have to think of the impact at all stages of his school career. He'll turn 18 in May of Yr 12/Lr Sixth. Who will he have to do things with that 18yos want to do - go to the pub, book a holiday? Everyone else in his school year will still be 17 or even 16.

He'll be 19 when he's taking his A Levels, if he does A Levels. Would be really want to still be at school at that age? What if he then needed to repeat Yr 13/retake his A Levels? He'd be there until he was twenty!

NeverDropYourMooncup · 20/09/2023 19:48

My June born would have killed me at the thought of it.

They don't seem ready this time of year, but by next September, all but the very youngest (and not even all of them) are so ready for Reception.

ETA: despite being one of the two smallest in size in the year group, it didn't seem to harm her education once she nailed reading.

HauntingSecrets · 20/09/2023 19:50

No, at our school there have been a few SEN children who have done reception twice but none that have delayed a year.

icallitasplodge · 20/09/2023 19:51

I am a May baby. I am not joking when I say I was in the top 1% of my primary school achievement wise. The other children in that group were my cousin (april) and two twins (December).

it evens out in the wash, and by year 8 I was average. That’s the point though. High acheivers and low achievers… it evens out.

AuntMarch · 20/09/2023 20:03

I work in a preschool and my son was one of those who left us to start school in September. He is a July birthday so I had often wondered about it in the years prior but it turned out that more than half of the other boys who moved up from us were also born May or later. (A good percentage of the girls too)
So his class is quite heavily weighted with summer born children, it would have been a disservice to him to hold him back from the peers he already knew when so many were in the same boat.
I wouldn't even worry about academics, emotional development (which includes friendships) should be the basis of any decision.

MaryToft · 20/09/2023 20:05

It really depends on where you live as to whether your local authority will accept a delayed starter. Some counties are much easier than others so just because you've read about it, it doesn't mean it will happen.
It also has implications, if you move house will they be able to stay in their current year in their new school etc.
Incidentally my May born child got near perfect scores in their SATS and would be bored to tears if we had delayed their entry to school.

CarpetRug · 20/09/2023 20:06

I’m a summer born baby. I did just fine going to school. I wouldn’t have been happy being delayed a year.

DragonFly98 · 20/09/2023 20:14

Yes definitely, reception may be play based but year one is not. You are giving your child an extra year of childhood, it has many benefits.

HonoriaLucastaDelagardie · 20/09/2023 20:20

You are giving your child an extra year of childhood, it has many benefits.

Will it still be beneficial when he's eighteen and still has another year of childhood school ahead of him?

AllProperTeaIsTheft · 20/09/2023 20:22

You are giving your child an extra year of childhood

No she isn't. Going to school doesn't stop you from being a child, or from acting like a child, especially in the first few years.

Whinge · 20/09/2023 20:23

DragonFly98 · 20/09/2023 20:14

Yes definitely, reception may be play based but year one is not. You are giving your child an extra year of childhood, it has many benefits.

An extra year of childhood sounds great, but children grow and being stuck at school when all your peers have left could easily cause resentment,. If OP or anyone else defers a child without SEN or other difficulties then they're giving their child another year of nursery, a year of being the oldest and a year of their child wondering why they were left behind when all their peers have started school. Deferring is the right choice for some children, but deferring just because a child was born in May is ridiculous and could become a decision that a parent will regret in years to come.

EasternStandard · 20/09/2023 20:24

AllProperTeaIsTheft · 20/09/2023 20:22

You are giving your child an extra year of childhood

No she isn't. Going to school doesn't stop you from being a child, or from acting like a child, especially in the first few years.

True

millymog11 · 20/09/2023 20:24

Would it be routinely acceptable to delay a child who was born on 3rd July so they did not go to school that September (when they were 4 and 2 months old)? Does anyone know? Does the school/council have to agree that there are special education needs in advance or can you just decide for yourself not to send?

Clefable · 20/09/2023 20:28

Does anyone really wish they hadn't been a child for so long though? Darn, a whole year of my working life gone, how tragic. I wish I hadn't wasted that year at nursery, I could have accomplished so much.

Anyway I don't know much about May deferrals, OP, but I do know that England is quite far behind the other nations (at least Scotland and NI I think, not sure about the situation in Wales!) in terms of accepting/understanding deferring children.

In Scotland, almost 50% of our 'summer borns' (which are January and Feb babies) are deferred to the next year. It's entirely commonplace here - no applying for anything, it's just a check box on the nursery funding form to say you want to defer and get an extra year of the 30 hours funding. Speak to any teacher here and you'll almost certainly be told they are hugely in favour of the youngest kids being deferred. But in England, I don't think it's moved into being a part of the culture yet, so people see it as being 'kept behind' or that you're going to have some monstrously large child towering over everyone else, when in reality there's usually only a few weeks difference between the natural oldest of the class and a deferred child anyway. So you probably won't get the same balance of responses you might if you were geographically elsewhere.

But May I think you're in that kind of no-man's-land where it can be really child dependent.

WeightoftheWorld · 20/09/2023 20:32

millymog11 · 20/09/2023 20:24

Would it be routinely acceptable to delay a child who was born on 3rd July so they did not go to school that September (when they were 4 and 2 months old)? Does anyone know? Does the school/council have to agree that there are special education needs in advance or can you just decide for yourself not to send?

There doesn't need to be SEN, being summer born itself is enough justification. It's your legal right not to send a child to school until the term after they turn 5. You have to request a reception start for summer borns in these circumstances, the admissions authority for the school has to agree to the request. However in practice almost all get accepted because the only way to reject a request is to say that the admissions authority believes it's in the child's best interests to miss reception year, which is a ludicrous proposition.

Who the admissions authority is depends on the type of school. So for community schools it's the local authority, for an academy it's the academy trust or governors, etc.

You can find more info about this in the very good Facebook group 'flexible school admissions for summer borns'.

PuttingDownRoots · 20/09/2023 20:33

I think its hard to look at your 3yo, and know what will be best in the long run. They might thrive on the lower age group, or might become frustrated at being held back when younger children are in Secondary and they are in Primary. They may be happier having more time to figure out what subjects to study, or resent still doing GCSEs at 17. Its not just Reception, its 14 years of school.

millymog11 · 20/09/2023 20:34

Weight thank you for posting that is really useful, appreciate it

WeightoftheWorld · 20/09/2023 20:34

icallitasplodge · 20/09/2023 19:51

I am a May baby. I am not joking when I say I was in the top 1% of my primary school achievement wise. The other children in that group were my cousin (april) and two twins (December).

it evens out in the wash, and by year 8 I was average. That’s the point though. High acheivers and low achievers… it evens out.

That's great for you, but statistically, on average, it does not even out, as I said upthread. You can easily Google to find the research. On average, summer born children do worse academically, even at GCSE level.

PerspiringElizabeth · 20/09/2023 20:35

Nope. My may born is in the top sets 🤷🏻‍♀️ so is his friend who is august born.

Original poster
Worrier987 · 20/09/2023 20:43

@PerspiringElizabeth what year is your DC in?

OP posts:
Bert2e · 20/09/2023 20:47

No, if you delay your child starting until they are 5 they will start after the May half term. They will then be the ONLY new child starting and the other children will already be settled. School won't be set up for them to be a new starter then.

HappyToSmile · 20/09/2023 20:48

No, absolutely not (mother of late august child. I did vaguely consider it for a very short while, but very very glad I didnt)
What are your reasons for considering it?