Starting school early

[SkedaddIe]

I hope this doesn't come across presumptuous.

We are ttc our 2nd and want a summer child rather than an autumn child so that they start school younger but covid and post pill amenorrhea has really disrupted our plans. We ideally wanted a smaller gap between our children so they could bond and learn from and with each other.

Is it very difficult (in England) to start early for autumn children? And how would we organise it?

Dd 4 loves school and we really appreciated that the professionals are better at educating then we are! For example we felt a little bit bad that dd started reading at 2 by memorising words rather than being taught phonics and blending.

There aren't any good private schools near us but lots of good state primary schools and a very decent spread of grammar schools.

I think that our next child will also very likely be well above average at least and would benefit from the birth date acceleration just as my dd seems to. Plus 1 or 2 years acceleration feels to me like it is a good balance between academic and social development for bright children.

Thinking about it a bit more, I guess it depends on your "end goal".

I'd like my kids to work hard and get the grades they deserve in their GCSEs and A levels. Enjoy their time at Uni and have a good choice of careers open to them.

My youngest wants to go into investment banking. Having worked there myself, you need a good set of grades so that's his objective. Being "up" a year wouldn't increase the likelihood of achieving high grades, in fact it might have the opposite effect. While you need to be numerate and literate, writing a internationally acclaimed thesis on black holes, climate change or whatever isn't of much help for this type of career. (Being able to absorb pressure and a lot of crap is very helpful though...)

If your children have aspirations to work in a specialist field such as science or academia, I can see more of a benefit in the chance to study a subject in more depth. I doubt this opportunity would manifest itself in a meaningful way until university when you have the time and support to achieve something meaningful academically if that's your objective. Again, I'm not sure that going up a year has a real influence on this as school curriculums are quite rigid and extension type work is often carried out in extra curricular sessions or outside school.

I can't imagine why you are thinking about this now!
FWIW my ds was older in the year (autumn birthday), went to a state school, was taken out of classes for some subects that he was excelling in (in both primary and secondary), stayed with his peers. It has done him no harm at all, in fact I would say it benefitted his social development (was always a bit awkward).
He is now an Oxford scholar