TOO YOUNG TO BE STARTING SCHOOL

[HIPPYFLIPPY]

DS2 is a July baby and I feel quite strongly that it is TOO BLOODY YOUNG to be starting school tomorrow. The school doesn't promote a January intake as some other areas do, and he goes straight in full time and that is it. Feel like he should be at home with me for another year. Emotionally and socially it has to be better to be at home, like most other continental countries who dont start them till 6 or 7. Very good reason for that. DS1 and DD1 were both older children in the year and both seemed ready. A part of it could be because he is my youngest and my last and we do have a very special bond, but he looks so tiny and small in his uniform and I so do not want him changing his basic sweet nature. My other two definately both got a bit more cocky and laery by the 2nd half of the year!! Opinions please!

For all the ones who are too young to start, there will be others who would be over-ripe if you left them another term. Staggering intakes is not always the answer, either. Our LEA had Sept and Jan intakes until this year, with the cut off date being end of Feb for the Sept intake. My DS1 is a March baby and couldn't understand why his friends were starting school earlier than him. The friendship groups are still quite strong 4 years later and a friend who is a primary teacher tells me she can tell without looking when checking yr 6 results who was a Sept intake child and who was a Jan intake child (obvious exceptions for geniuses and dunces apart). The extra term's school experience is quite a longstanding effect, socially and academically.

DS2 was 4 in April and starts school next week. If it had been last year he would have had to wait till january and would have been champing at the bit. I'm delighted he's starting now. I know that the reception teachers are making special provisions for the very young ones. The experience they will receive will be very similar to preschool and nursery until they start Y1. I suppose it depends on the school - I know some reception classes line the kids up and make them sit at desks, but that's not the case at ours.

I am wondering now if we could have kept our place. The school reneged on its promise that we could go back in autumn. I think they panicked.

We did half days and part time, finally decided to stop for the summer term and they said, Ok, fine, you can try again in the autumn.

Then about 4 weeks before end of term they rang and said we had to bring him in for several days every week to get him back into the swing of things.
We couldn't as we were in the middle of moving house and he was already stressed out. He didn't want to go.

So we didn't do this and they basically said, sorry but you can't come back in the autumn then.

In retrospect perhaps I should have questioned this as now we have choice of shit school or home ed and I am not sure I like having being put in that position. Despite wanting to try HE.

They also contacted the edu. welfare officer and threatened me with this before they did it. I was very worried as I had nothing in writing that they had agreed his absence. I contacted the home ed liaison bloke who was lovely and came to see us, said they should have marked his absence as agreed.
In afct they had marked it as illness - then it became clear. they had asked me for a Drs letter to explain his absence for the summer term. I'd asked Dr despite thinking this was odd, she didn't want to write it as he wasn;'t even ill. I told them I wasn't comfortable asking my Dr to write something disingenuous.

I think they were trying to cover their backs, perhaps so they sustained his funding for that term.

In the end they panicked, decided we had to go...gosh it makes me angry. I hope they were pulled up on their fabrication of register thing. The admissions sec. was like Dolores Umbridge. Always smiling sweetly while implying ' you are a pikey and we do not want you here'.

If you are not happy and feel he is not ready. Take him out again.

It is not the law until he is 5.

dd was 5 on August 30th, so now just started year 1.

I was quite hysterical about her starting school last year - she was a baby, as well as being terribly shy and awkward.

But - school is 'outstanding' and ds already goes there. I started her off as normal, thereby bagging my place, and then quite calmly announced she would only be attending mornings. I would never have dared do this for ds, I was much too cowed, but I stood up to the head, who was initially hostile to the idea, and kept repeating the law, and just smiling and going my own sweet way.

It worked out fine and by the last four weeks dd attended full time.