Skipping a year in primary

[deanstreet]

I see it is very very rare to skip a year in UK whilst it is not uncommon in America or Australia or France. The most commonly cited reason is social and emotional development rather than the academics.

After reading a few research papers found online, it seems very inconclusive, just like any social science and is eventually "it depends".

The US Accelerated Institute advocates skipping.
I am reading its [clearly self-serving] book now and it seems rather logical and aligns with my common sense.

Problem is almost all 7+ preps (Latymer etc) state entry year is strictly by age. 11+ admission policies also state it is essentially by age, except special circumstances and at the discretion of the school. Even the child is absolutely fine coping with a year ahead and can perform well in 11+ assessment, the age policy alone will handicap the child.

Opinions?

@WoollyandSarah Maths is a tiny part of the school day. They are not spending hours and hours doing repetitive and dull work. If they find the maths easy they finish quickly and move on to something else. You can absolutely intercede with the teacher if you want to influence the “something else”.

Almost every other subject learned at primary doesn’t even require specific differentiation by ability - bright children will write better, more interesting stories, apply their science, history, geography knowledge in more creative ways, they can still participate in Art, Music, Drama, IT, PE etc etc and indeed might struggle in some of these.

There are always a range of ages across any academic year so the likelihood is there will have been other autumn born children very close in age to your child. If they struggled with friendship issues I wouldn’t rush to blame it on age.

September

well then as you were older int he year the difference wouldn;t be as noticeable on the hwole.

You entered Year 1 as a 4 year old and turned 5 in September a few days later - and there would be lots of other 5 year olds that had only turned 5 a few days/weeks before you.

Had you been August born and just turned 4 going into Year 1 and not turning 5 for another year, whilst all around you had 5 and 6 years olds you would have perhaps been telling us a different story.

Maths is typically an hour of a primary school day, in English state primaries, so it is hours and hours. It, by design, includes a huge amount of repetition. Some repetition is necessary, even for the most able, to develop fluency. But for some, it is just poorly designed. Every year we had the same discussions with teachers about providing more differentiated work. Sometimes that was successful, sometimes not.

From nursery onwards, every adult who worked with my DD has commented on her unusual maturity, which may in part reflect her being the oldest in the year, but not all autumn born children are lije this. She would have benefited socially from more mature friends.

I can't imagine you would have objected to her being in the year above, if she had arrived on her due date, so I really don't see why that arbitrary cut-off makes any difference.

My son has consistently been 2 years ahead of his peers. My mother (not in the UK) asked why the school hadn't let him skip at least a grade . My son overheard and immediately said no why would he want to be with the older kids. He wanted to be around kids his age.

He did move into a split class with the higher year but was still mostly sticking with his age group (and just a bit frighted of the girls who grow up some much faster than the boys at that age).

The school have been pretty good at challenging him with more advanced work, while giving him the space to emotionally mature.

I skipped a grade - but I went to a school for gifted children so we all skipped the same grade as a class, meaning I was still with my age group. Due to a temporary move (parental divorce), I had to got to a mainstream middle school in another town for half a year. I then felt out of place due to my younger age - I definitely noticed the difference. I totally understand why the UK focusses on peer groupings in primary.

But she wasn’t born on her due date. There is an abundance of evidence showing that summer born children are educationally disadvantaged. If I’d had a late August born child I would have deferred them.

Your child’s teachers must have been unusually poor not to have been able to cope with an autumn born child who was only around a year ahead in Maths? (And if more than a year ahead, how would it have helped her to be in the year above? And was she a year ahead across the board or just Maths).

Btw if by “mature” you mean “unable to form friendships with same-aged peers” then that suggests some form of neurodiversity. It’s common for ND children to prefer socialising with older kids as they tend to humour them more.

You can't tell how "ahead" children are because they are not given access to the next level of the curriculum or assessed against it in English state schools, so to say that a child is "a year ahead" or "two years ahead" isn't meaningful.

She isn't neurodiverse, she's very able to make friends with peers, but when a significant proportion of her peers are actually in a different year group, because that's the way it is sliced, it isn't to her advantage. It was quite sad when her little friendship group moved up from nursery to reception without her.

You seem to have very black and white thinking on this - that your hypothetical summer born child would be deferred a year, without having met them. When my DD was born, I was delighted that she'd made it into September, for all of the reasons you give. But now I know her, I recognise that might not have been the right thing for her as an individual, rather than a statistic.

Following this with interest and I would like to hear the thoughts of @Octavia64 (and anyone else) on what "additional challenge in their area of talent" should look like when done well. DS is year 1 and IME working at least 2 years ahead in maths. The curriculum for this week is "counting in 2s, 5s and 10s". DS could do this at the start of Nursery year, he knew all his times tables by the end of Reception, and spent this last Easter holidays working on lots of long multiplication worksheets. (He is DC3, so DH and I have a fairly good idea of what's in the primary maths curriculum by now).

DH and I have attempted to talk to school about him repeatedly since he started in nursery but it feels like we're being fobbed off with talk of "mastery" and "challenge tasks".

I have got to the point I feel school is just going to be rather boring for him as far as maths is concerned, and we will just teach him maths at home at his own pace, but is there anything specific we could ask for?

@WoollyandSarah I don’t believe that starting school at just 4 is good for any child, however intelligent or “mature” they are. Childhood is not a race.

If your DD is perfectly able to make friends with her peers then why did you say she had struggled socially in her current year, even with other autumn born children? And if she was truly gifted at maths you would know about it and wouldn’t quibble about what “ahead” means- (and probably wouldn’t choose that for her) - likelihood is she’s above average, nothing particularly out of the ordinary, is getting all the benefits of being older in the school year and rather than appreciating her good fortune you’re complaining about it.

Life is a race, including childhood

I’m an ex maths teacher.

one of my kids is a gifted musician. So I can talk about those.

music - take up instruments. Let them try them out. Get them playing in groups as soon as possible - brass band, recorder group, church choir/church band.

if possible choose a school that has a lot of music - orchestra, choir etc. most instruments have a national children’s/youth group as well - my dc sang with national youth choir which was invaluable. There’s often county orchestra/band etc as well.

maths - NRich is what is often used for enrichment. Don’t bother focussing too much on calculations - great if he can do them but the reasoning is more important.

https://nrich.maths.org/

nrich has tasks for age 3 through to 18 with teachers notes and usually solutions as well. It’s fairly well known so if you ask for it at school they hopefully will be aware of it.

Depending on how ahead he is the primary maths challenge might be of interest:

https://www.primarymathschallenge.org.uk/

singapore also have some interesting stuff along similar lines by grade level.

https://simcc.org/local-tier-3-contest-singapore-math-challenge/

Race to what - death?

Thank you @Octavia64. We might ask the school re NRich. DS is in some ways quite immature for his age and less able to explain himself than DC1 and 2 were at the same age, so struggles a bit with the whole "explaining concepts' thing. The school is good on music though I don't think he'll have the maturity to start an instrument for another couple of years. He does do chess (I know a lot about chess and gifted children in this area) and also shows some interest in foreign languages. He likes counting in 2s, 5s and 10s in French - not sure this will be a challenge that will occur to the year 1 teacher to give him though!

I am the parent of a very academically able child, now grown up. He was gifted mathematically - not just 1 or 2 year ahead but tacking A level Maths problems in Y6.
@Octavia64 has some fantastic suggestions and that is exactly what we did with DS. He learnt 2 instruments and had achieved G8 on both by 16. He used Nrich, all the primary and secondary Maths Challenges. We took advice about acceleration and were firmly told not to - particularly in Maths and that advice was given by a very eminent (Fields Medal winning) academic Mathematician.
He stayed with his year group through Primary and Secondary, left with an Oxford offer, aced his degree and was a Scholar and a Prize winner and now has a very lucrative job. He also was allowed to enjoy being a child/teenager. He has a wide circle of friends of varying academic abilities and not being accelerated did him no harm at all (although he pretty much accelerated himself through the Maths curriculum).

My husband was (mysteriously) put into school a year early and throughout, his reports are quite sad reading. He was gifted, sure, but there are frequent mentions of emotional immaturity. He was interviewed for Oxford at 16 and told to go away and come back a year later. Which he did, and took a gap year, and got in, to eventually gain the top first in his year in his subject. he remains one of the brightest people I know. But at what cost I wonder?

All v weird, and MiL never fessed up to why she did this (in the mid sixties). We joke that he was a pain at home, and sent her bonkers with his constant 'but why?' questioning.

To add, he went to state schools. I don't hold with this nonsense (mentioned upthread) that private schools generally work a couple of years ahead of state. They all have to do the same public examinations so why would they do that?

Do what I did, OP - and let your children be children, with their own age groups, and add music, debate and great experiences to their lives. My two aced everything and ended up doing the same at Durham and Cambridge respectively. Clearly they take after their dad, not me!

I moved up a year at school and would not recommend it. The difference in social development between a 5yo and a 6yo say can be massive and is extremely hard for a child to overcome especially added to the stigma of being the kid from the year below.

(I'm also late-diagnosed high-masking AuDHD and according to my psychiatrist this is a common pattern.)

I'm not sure that comparisons to America are helpful. My understanding is that in the US system it's also common for kids to stay down a year when they are struggling, and hence the school year system is very different and much less linked to age.

I didn't say she struggled socially, I said she struggled with the social immaturity of her peers. Subtly different perhaps, but it is like making a year 5 hang out with a load of year 3s, they'd find them annoying.

I wouldn't describe her as gifted in maths either, because that's not helpful language. But she did find the pace slow, the repetition tedious and would have been fine moving up with the year ahead when she had been in mixed age classes with them. All we are talking about is moving ahead a year, not sending her to university at 12.

I think the ideal for her, given that we couldn't afford independent schooling throughout, would have been years R-6, one year ahead in a state primary, then repeat year 6 in an academically selective prep, to cover the knowledge gap that she started secondary school with, compared to her independently educated peers. That would also have given her peers some time to catch up in terms of maturity.

You are obviously welcome to believe what you like, but your inability to understand individual differences and lack of flexibility of thought is quite wearing, so I don't think there is much point continuing to reply.

They don't work ahead generally, they lush very small children to do more work than is reasonable!

My friends kids have more homework, more spellings, more reading than mine. They had more in reception than we have in year 1.

It's crazy!

@WoollyandSarah I am with you on this, all these talks about "enriching" assumes the enrichment/broadening works seamlessly, which is a big assumption, and also what about the non-enrichment hours spent in the classroom with pupils of lesser intellectual capacity and motivation? And it is not like children must make friends within the classroom only, parents can help make friends of same age outside of the classroom.

That's interesting to read @itsnotfairisit I was just about to post similar about DH. He went up to Cambridge at just turned 17 (in the late 1970's), was miserable and said if he has his time again he would absolutely not have gone early - he felt socially completely out of his depth even though he was probably only a year or a year and a half younger than everyone else.

I don’t know if op is on the wind up or really believes what she’s posting. I hope the former.

Life is a race - what the hell?!

I am not white, born with old money. That's why. That's why grammar schools and other highly selective schools are filled with non-whites.

No, it’s like making a year 5 hang out with other year 5s and finding them annoying. That is the whole point. Your child was in her correct year group and still found socialising challenging for whatever reason. There is no reason to think things would have been easier in the year above and it is more likely it would have been harder.

I am perfectly capable of understanding individual differences, but I also find it tedious when people think their own kids are too special to be accommodated in the normal school system, when 99% of the time the problems either lie with the child or form part of some kind of humble brag.

I'm not sure whether this is a windup or not, but are you saying white children are less able?

I skipped year 2 and it did me no harm. However in a school that is providing sufficient stretch for able pupils, I'm not sure it makes that much difference, either. In primary, the sort of child that gets accelerated usually still needs extension work in the higher year anyway. It tends to be mainly in reading/maths where they may be ahead of what is being taught - for everything else it's a case of being quicker to pick things up when taught, and they'd be quicker whether they are 11 or 12 or 13. By the time you get to secondary school, being an early reader doesn't really matter.
I had a friend, now a professor, who was a year behind at secondary (which was because she lived outside catchment, and they couldn't get a place in the right year), and she didn't seem unduly bored for being in the year below - just quick to learn in the same way I was.