Deferring a May born child

[Kingfisher4]

I have a daughter born 29th May. She is currently 3, due to start school next year.

I am currently thinking about deferring her, but only if she is able to start in reception the following year.

Would most people think that is crazy? She is not developmentally behind as such, although she is not fully toilet trained yet. I have been trying for months, but she still has more than one accident a day.

My reasoning is more based on how I feel about the education system in general. I don't mind reception as it's still very play based, but I hate the idea of 5 year olds going into key stage 1 and starting formal education so young. I have 3 older sons, none of them summer born, so have never been able to make this decision.

If this carries on children will be 10 when they start school. It’s ridiculous. For background I tried to plan my pregnancy so my DC was born in September. They were 3 weeks early, so an August baby. And I sucked it up. Now a fully fledged adult, always very sporty, went to a RG University.

Please don't just think of the primary years. As at least one other poster has pointed out young people can leave school at the end of June in the school year they turn 16.Therefore your child could choose to leave with no qualifications at the end of year10. It has happened. The parents who thought they were doing the right thing for their summer born child have been caught out. An acquaintance of mine put her child back a year but by age 7 she realised her daughter was so bored in the year 1 and being very disruptive. The school were talking permanent exclusion, parents saw sense and moved her to another school into year 2 and from then all things got sorted.

if you did defer I wouldn’t be worried about her feeling older or any of the worries about football teams ages (got to love Mumsnet). She’ll always be totally fine if she is two months older than the September babies.

Why is pointing out a known (and childhood long) complication with teams a “gotta love Mumsnet” issue?

Also, OP’s child would be 3 months older than the oldest (1 Sep) September baby. But she won’t be in a class of September babies and her… she will be up to 15 months older than the youngest in her class.

I agree with you. I did support one friend in deferring but in her case her child was born at 27 weeks gestation, and was not due until the end of October. In her case the deferment was appropriate. It allowed the child time to have essential surgery and recovery before starting school. To my mind deferral should be restricted to cases such as my friends.

They now have to show how missing the YR would benefit the child, they can't simply have an automatic policy of straight to Y1 anymore

It sounds as if you're dead set on deferring (if you can) but like many others on this thread I think it would be a bad idea.

A PP pointed out that about 1/4 of the class would be younger than her, she wouldn't be the youngest by a long way. If you deferred then she would be more than a year older than about 1/4 of her classmates.

Be careful not to project based on your own experiences of school as a child. She is not you. You were an August child and the education system was different then. If you visit schools and ask thoughtful questions you might be pleasantly surprised.

I would think you are bonkers! I am an end of May birthday and I was absolutely fine. My friends son has just started this year at a month younger than yours and he is also fine, in fact he's enjoying school more than nursery.

I think you are misunderstanding the test you have to apply.

You don't need to decide whether it's in a child's best interests to defer for a year. It's 100% up to parents to decide this and you have no say in this.

You need to decide that for a child that has been deferred, whether it is in their best interests to miss their reception year of school. It would be very rare for it to be beneficial for a child to miss a year to school (especially given the attendance push), so in reality, refusals are vanishingly rare. Sometimes there's a refusal when first considered, because plenty of people (including you) apply the wrong test. The parents 'win' eventually as the guidance is on their side.

It's scaremongering basically. Same for missing a year with secondary school. They have to apply the same test.

Also, I would check with your nursery if they are willing to have her stay there another year/part year, even if the funding is available. They may plan numbers on a different basis.

Yes you can. I'm a nursery teacher and sometimes advise this but usually in cases such as developmental delay, speech and language issues, preemie or born right at the end of the summer.
I have 2 boys. One born in September and one in June. I worried about the June born starting school but he's flying. It would have done him a disservice to defer him.

You still need to apply for a place in Jan and when the places are offered in April you need to let them know you want to defer so you actually don't need to make a decision yet.

You do need to consider the impact of all of her friends moving up and her staying behind with the just turned 3's especially if there isn't a learning/language need.

Prematurity. Disability. Cancer.

Good to know that as well as the struggles the children face because of these sorts of reasons (amongst many others) they'll also be bullied for being too old. Friendless because they find their cohort babyish. Feel like they were stupid. Leave school without any qualifications. That these parents in choosing to defer are doing their child a disservice. Urgh.

In reality, that's rubbish. My deferred child has plenty of friends and is content with being the oldest. She's less content with the brain tumour that marred much of her preschool years, and is glad she got that year back through deferring.

If she becomes so anti-school that she leaves without qualifications, I doubt she'd have aced them just because I could be fined if she didn't go.

For the child that's born 3 months premature, they should have been in their adopted cohort. Why should they have the double whammy of being biologically the youngest in year by several months plus the likely challenges that come with extreme prematurity.

But it's good to know that we made a terrible decision for our children and they'll be miserable and friendless eh...

You can defer a child born in the summer term. We did this with my son and it was the absolute best decision we made. I thought however it would be an easy process. It absolutely wasn’t and we had to fight the council. They don’t like it because your child will end up spending an extra year in the education system. Another trick they try to pull is that yes you can defer but your child starts primary in year 1 and not reception. They will also try to tell you studies show that it’s not beneficial. Which is the case for children without SEND and not horn in the summer these studies are mixed. However it’s overwhelmingly positive for children without SEND SEND and summer born. My child is both.

if you think it’s right for your child, get on it straight away call the council get the balls in motion. It was challenging to get but absolutely worth it. (My child has an EHCP so that might have complicated matters further.) they can’t legally make you take your child to school until the September after their 5th birthday. So when they said no to me I initially said that so he’s not going until then (I got legal advice which said that) the council backed down eventually: good luck.

@ThisShyCat- completely agree

What an absurd way of reflecting on what people are saying @Somuchgoo

forewarned is forearmed. All posters are saying is to actually think about the potential problems throughout the child’s schooling. I would have thought that was just common sense. If after thinking about all the potential scenarios, a parent still believes it’s the best choice, then go for it. The point is that it’s just foolish to look at the outcomes of September born children and assume that deferring a child results in those September outcomes. Of course it doesn’t.
I had a look at the Facebook type support groups and they’re full of ‘oh it was wonderful for my child, year 2 now and thriving’ and not quite so full of ‘my 18 year old is thrilled to bits to still have a year left’.

On a further note another point to consider is the fact later on this could impact her future education. Being educated out of year means legally that some schools will not be able to take her legally because they aren’t able to teach her age. For example in an 11-16 secondary school she would not be able for a legal and insurance reason able to go to that school. We had to consider this when making this decision. Although for us it would only impact two days of school so we agreed with the primary school he wouldn’t go in on those days. For a May birthday it might be more complicated. Some schools will be fine with it others not so. But for us deferral outweighed these cons

But it's good to know that we made a terrible decision for our children and they'll be miserable and friendless eh...

NOBODY, absolutely NOBODY on this thread has said that children should not be deferred where there is a specific need.

Grow up. Nobody has said these things

Go for it!! I'm with you on the fact that children in this country start formal education too young.
If you instinctively feel that it is better for your DD to start later, do it, as you know her best. As long as she has contact with other children she'll be fine.
Have a look at a variety of schools and see which one suits her character best.....
My DD is August born and she went into Y1 at just turned 5 (various reasons) and whilst she hadn't learnt to read or write, she caught up quickly and is doing absolutely fine at school. My DS on the other hand is September born and went into reception (turned 5 within a couple of weeks). He is incredibly bright, so bored by reception work very quickly - adjustments had to be made......

She’d potentially be 16 months older than the youngest in her class (those born Aug 2023).

DS has more or less the same bday, is now in year 6 and been totally fine.

DD starts in 2026 too. They will change sooooo much before then. See how she is in May when she turns 4 and then decide?

They have. They've said every single one of those things, along with that it should be banned.

In reality every single parent of a disabled child agonises over every the decisions they make are right, whether it'll make it harder for their child to fit in etc.

No, but they HAVE said deferred children will be enormous, sixteen (gasp) months older, bored, bullied, out of place, resentful etc. So either that's true or it isn't - kids and parents are not great at nuance or discretion. And so, even with a 'specific' need they'll be ostracised. Allegedly.

They wouldn’t be allowed to be in secondary school at age 20. Secondary can only go up to year 14 and age 18-19

I certainly haven’t said any of those things. I have said that there are things to be considered if you are deferring your child simply because of your education philosophy that may be disadvantageous. Things that if you haven’t had a child going through secondary you may not have thought of.

My August born DS is not a huge fan of school and this would have absolutely been the case had he been September born. He’s very bright and in top sets with lots of friends but just doesn’t enjoy classroom based learning. If I had deferred and he had to stay in school a whole year after he was supposed to, he wouldn’t have forgiven me! Or he would leave at the end of year 10 because age wise he would be legally allowed to.

it’s like a pp says, lots of kids will be thriving in year 2/3 potentially but maybe not so thrilled as teens. Also my DS hit puberty very early and was 5 foot 8 in year 7. He would have absolutely hated being that tall in primary school. A 12 year old girl in year 6 is possibly going to have the same issue.

I can understand the rationale for July and August babies because they are so young in the year and also their birthdays happen (in most cases) when the school year has ended. I don’t think it’s fair for April and may kids to be deferred if no sen or other issues like being prem. Sports day for example would see your kid race against kids 15 months younger in some cases! Your child will have an obvious advantage and kids will absolutely pick up on that.

Here you are, some posts here.

• Parents shouldn’t be able to defer.

• But also, and the more I think about this, the crosser I am on behalf of the children, won’t the very point of doing this affect their confidence? You are essentially saying to your child (in their eyes as they think black and white and the worst) that they weren’t clever enough to start with their cohort.

• parents are deliberately choosing to hold their child back, essentially without any consent, putting them one year behind everything they do for the rest of their life. One year behind where they should have been for gcse, alevels, accruing money, possibly retirement age one year behind.

• Holding a child back from learning to read, and therefore opportunities to learn and develop their imaginations through books, seems a dreadful thing to me.

• I would worry the impact it would have on her self esteem- my parents held me back because I wasn’t ( insert here) enough.

• she would be seen as likely to be less intelligent

• She will feel like a baby when she's in reception and all her friends and cohort are in year 1.