Would you delay your May Born child by one year

[Worrier987]

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 ?

For no particular reason - no I wouldn't.

Its a great option for those that need it though. My April born is going to start at CSA at 5y 4m. Academically she'd be fine now but a serious illness has meant she's not ready to go either emotionally or physically.

I could send her this year and she'd arrive and leave in a pushchair, only be able to do half days so she'd miss half the year and she'd be in nappies.

In a year hopefully she'll have grown in stamina enough to manage a full timetable and maybe (hopefully) even manage the 10m school run, and maybe we'd have solved the continence issues.

It was so obviously 'right' that all 3 schools are fully supportive of it, no hesitation at all from them.

Struggling to manage half a timetable vs hopefully thriving is a no brainer for her.

But it's not a decision to take lightly and i wouldn't have done it unless I felt I needed to.

Ive deferred my 8 yo jul and its been hugely better than her older sister jun in cohort.

Eldest has started secondary and its hard going.
Of the 135 girls 101 would be older.
Her sats were all exceeding but her older friends did (as expected statistically) do eve better. A d now that data will be used for setting and predicting grades.
She came say10% for maths and 25% for reading. But will! Be underestimated.
Also srrugglling with friendship. Realistically most sen are diagnosed after 4..

Her dsis for comparison got 111 on ks1 maths sat to dc1 getting 102.
A d dc1 teacher said at start of y6 she hasnt come up as an exceeding mathematician.

I wish every April-August born was deferred to be honest as then we'd have the situation where the school year of birthdays was April to March, rather than September to August, and more children would be ready for school and you wouldn't get the situation of a child potentially being over a year older than others in his/her class. Children used to start school at 5. Then it used to be that the youngest in the year didn't start until after Christmas. Now they all start in September whether ready or not. And expectations have massively changed. There might be a lot of play but there's also a lot of government dictated standards that teachers have to get them to whether they're ready or not.

Definitely not. I considered it for my dtds who were prem and born 30 August but wouldn’t occur to me if they were May and no sign of sen. I decided not to delay and they are now 12 and in top sets at primary. They caught up in year 4/5 but the one downside was their confidence. In reception it’s very obvious that other dc can do things like write when my two couldn’t and that stuck with them with dtd1 in particular often saying she’s stupid. We had to talk openly about the differences a year in age makes at that point and how she’s clearly very clever because she’s almost a year younger but now academically doing very very well.

Why? DD was May, DH August. They went to Cambridge and Oxford respectively. I'm a July birthday and whilst I wasn't Oxbridge it wasn't my birthday that held me back academically l, just wasn't as clever.

Ok so even if it doesn’t average out perfectly, someone is always going to be older than you.

unfortunately someone is always going to be cleverer than you. Messing up your child’s school / unsettling friendship groups / making them catch up later on for the sake of a few months is creating instability in a child’s life, for what gain? The system is how it is. If it was an august 31st 11.59pm baby, maybe, but there will be children 3 months younger than OP’s child who - guess what - may still do better academically than the September child.

what is anyone achieving here? Even if they complete school a year older than everyone else, they still straight go in to secondary at year 8 without the settling in period of year 7.

They dont miss y7!

I think more relevant is the consideration that our testing rewards older children so is not ability.

Why would you do that? I have August birthday and it never effected me …in fact I have just had my 60th and very happy to be the last one out of my year !
My son is a July birthday and he was absolutely fine and only irritated that he was one of the last out of his friends to have driving lessons and have a drink at the pub legally!
Holding your child back academically ,really doesn’t make any difference to the outcome of their education .

They don't miss Y7.

Recent changes mean children no longer miss YR or Y7 when they defer a year.

They start a year later and go through all school years with that cohort.

It’s actually surprising how little some schools know about this issue too.

It’s only been two years since I deferred
my son, so very recent, and even then the headteacher told me that if I did defer his start to Reception then he’d either have to miss an academic year of Primary at some point to put him back with the cohort he “should have” been in, (she recommended skipping Year 3), OR he would have to skip Year 7 on the transition to secondary school and just go straight into Year 8.

And she wasn’t saying this as some kind of tactic to try and deter me from the idea, she honestly thought this was the case.

I told her that she was wrong (I said it nicely) and hopefully it triggered her and other senior staff to go and update themselves on the current protocols so they could give accurate information to other parents in similar circumstances.

My dd is August born and we deferred. She y5 now. Best thing for her definitely and great to have that choice. Her best friend in same year is 2 weeks younger than her so doesn't bother her.
I wouldn't if may born though, unless a good reason. That's 4 months older than any friends abd that will make a difference.

Why do these threads always attract people who clearly know absolutely nothing about summer borns starting reception at CSA making sweeping statements like "they will have to miss yr 7" and so on which is absolutely not true?

It's fine to comment and say it's not a decision you made or would make, but people really shouldn't be stating things as facts that simply are not facts.

It's not about being the oldest in the class either which a lot of people don't seem to understand, data from other countries shows that the gap between oldest and youngest children in achievement is smaller where school starting age is older. This is about the age at which children start school, not where their birthday is within a specific class group.

My oldest was born 30th of August, he started school just a few days after turning 4, he did absolutely fine, he was probably a lot smaller than some but nothing held him back and he progressed well, he's now at uni studying business management 😊

How does this work now? Would you be able to put them back into their default age group class at any point or is the delay locked in?

Yeah, my eldest - June- seemed so small starting reception but he would have been bored out of his mind if he was still in secondary right now rather than going to college.

The youngest girl in my older daughter’s year group is the brightest. And I’m a late August-born Oxford graduate myself, so can’t really complain.

I also have a dd born in early July. I did think about it, but in the end decided against. She wasn’t as school ready as her sister (March birthday) had been, and the first couple of years she was working towards rather than meeting expectations on all assessments, but that seemed to have levelled out in y2, and she’s now meeting or exceeding in all areas.

I think she’d have been bored in nursery for another year, and I’m pretty sure we made the right choice.

We have a friend who has kept her second child back a year, after feeling that her summer born son would have benefitted from it. He’s far behind in class - so perhaps she’s right.

I don’t think there’s a hard and fast rule - but perhaps for some children it’s helpful?

I don’t think there’s a hard and fast rule - but perhaps for some children it’s helpful?

I think this is what it comes down to. If a child is behind socially or in terms of learning, then keeping them back could really help them. But I see children who are very able being kept back, and then they are frustrated at the pace of the other (younger) children, and their parents are unhappy that they aren't being stretched. So yes, their marks may look higher, because they are not being compared to children the same age as them, but they might be more engaged and interested and fit in better in the class above.

The assumption will be that they remain with their adopted cohort throughout their education. However, if there were extreme circumstances where the parents and school agreed that a change would be for the best, then they could be moved, space in the other year group permitting too of course. I would wager that this change is extremely rare though, I can't imagine many children would benefit from missing a year of their schooling by moving cohorts.

Are you a primary school teacher?

I'm June born, was top sets all through. DH is May, Cambridge grad with straight As, DD is August born (now Scotland) and is working at the top of the year above (switched from England and dropped a year because August) but is socially very much of her year. At 4 she was physically tiny but she's now one of the tallest in her year (and above average for the year above in height (but not weight)). So wouldn't assume just because they're tiny now they'll stay that way. The smallest kid in her year isn't the youngest, couple of weeks younger than DD but has short parents

DS is November and in Scotland wouldn't be unusual to defer but I haven't because he's been desperate to follow his sister into school for ages, and he's actually one of the most confident and strongest kids in his class. In a leafier area with more deferrals it would have been slightly more possible but in his cohort he was always big and confident despite age. He's 4 weeks in and enjoying his work, settled in, goes is super easy to breakfast club.

Absolutely no way.

DC3 is July born and started reception this year, I've spent a lot of time considering it but decided not to defer in the end. For a May born, unless there were special circumstances or in an area where a very significant proportion of summer borns are also deferring, I wouldn't consider it.

The reason I wouldn't is that if there weren't any other deferred summer borns, they would be 4 months older than anybody else in the year. There aren't that many September borns, so the gap to most children in the year would be bigger.

My Grandchild has a July birthday, and is SEN due to a physical condition.
As they kept up with their classmates and enjoyed reception, it would have been detrimental to defer.

Mine is being assessed for sen and I'm considering it but not sure either, why are you considering it Op?

Every time this topic comes up on Mumsnet it astounds me how much misinformation there is about it.
Join the flexible school admissions for summer born children Facebook group and you will find all the information you need about the process for deferring your DC. It is an extremely straightforward process and your child WILL NOT have to skip reception.
There have been lots of studies on this topic and statistically summer born children do worse throughout there lives in many different areas. They are more likely to go to prison, more likely to have mental health problems. This list is quite extensive.
So my question would be, why on earth wouldn't you defer?
I have just done it for my June born DC and it was 100% the best decision we've ever made.
My DC would have coped academically last year but our main concern was the emotional maturity. Not just now but throughout school. Clearly being a year older when sitting your GCSE's and dealing with teenage dramas can only be an advantage.
In other countries it is very normal to choose to defer or children in general all start later but for some reason it is still seen as unusual in the UK 🤷‍♀️