To defer a bright child

[Clairebear231]

My son has always been bright, potty trained early, good speech from a young age etc I have never had any concerns. He is due to start school this September at 4 years and 2 months. All professionals say he is capable and ready....but I've recently found out I can defer him starting until next year when he will 5 years and 2 months giving him a big advantage throughout his school career.
My DH is very against this and feels he will be fine in school but I don't want him to be just fine I'd like him to excel, I'm also worried he will struggle being one of the youngest both academically and socially.
What are your thoughts on this? Has anyone not deferred a bright child and then regretted it or vice versa?

Grump caused by factors unrelated to the thread. 🤣

If he is bright, then you will be harming him by deferring. Being ahead of your classmates is a real burden. It is socially ostracizing, creates poor study skills, and often causes problems with anxiety. We are at the school advocating for our bright child constantly.

DH and I were the same. It is not a pleasant way to go through school. Don’t make it worse on your child by making him even older and more advanced.

I think you are tying yourself up in knots when you don't need to. He has a school place and is ready to embark on his education surrounded by his friends. Reception is mainly play based. He will be fine.
There are definitely some kids who would benefit from an extra year before starting for a variety of reasons but you have told us he is ready. I'm sure he would prefer to have that extra year age 18. A year he can spend travelling the world or a year in industry, rather than spend an extra year singing wheels on the bus. Again.

My DC is the youngest in the year.

They are bright and inquisitive and like you say reached milestones early and shows a strong aptitude for learning (in an age relatable way).

I never considered deferring because DC was ready to do more. Loves the friendship groups and enjoys social aspect of school, adores the teachers and the whole school environment.

DC isn’t overly keen on tricky words and reading and is no doubt slightly behind some of their peers but they are ahead in lots of other ways - physically very robust, great recall and memory, amazing observation and comprehension etc.

The way I see it, I can always get DC a tutor. They would have been frustrated and bored to do another year of nursery and that would have led to behaviour issues imo. Yes it’s a bit of a challenge with the literally academic side but if the aptitude for learning is there, then they will catch up.

I know DC could be impacted by being so young, so I will go out of my way to mitigate the risk (extra work at home, a tutor when they are older, lots of encouragement and confidence building and all round skills - not just focused on classroom learning)

We are deferring our recently turned 4yo, who is very bright and sociable.

We are not doing it to gain an advantage but because she's got a serious illness which causes fatigue and mobility issues and it's likely to require complex surgery during her 'bonus year,' (which would have been reception).

We've agonized about whether its the right thing to do, the negatives of doing it etc.

Deferring is a great option when a child needs it - where they have disabilities, or a very disrupted childhood, or are premature. To do it just to gain an advantage just seems a bit wrong personally. Someone has to be the youngest...

My daughter is July born, soon to be 19. She is bright too and I think she would have benefitted enormously by being held back a year. She has often seemed immature in comparison to her friends and she really struggled all through secondary school with anxiety. She did fine academically but I think she would have excelled if she'd started reception class a year later.

My other daughter is also summer born. She struggled emotionally in primary school
But absolutely excelled academically in secondary school. She is now studying at a top Uni. So everyone is different!

It's not about being the youngest.

In systems where all children start school agred 6-7 - when formal learning is developmentally appropriate - there is minimal measurable difference between the oldest and youngest in a cohort so it doesn't matter who is older/ younger. And none of these negative effects that persist throughout education and into adulthood (emotional, social, mental health) seem to manifest i.e. no significant difference between the outcomes for the oldest and youngest in the cohort when they start at that age.

But when they start at 4-5, there is. A very significant difference that then persists. It doesn't disappear when they reach 6-7. It narrows a little simply because there is less of an age gap so in the long term there's nothing to be gained by being "oldest in cohort": that effect vanishes. But in the UK system where they start so very young - before formal learning is developmentally appropriate - the data suggests that this does long-term damage. Because at 10, 15, 18, 21, there is still a significant difference that does not exist in systems where everyone starts later.

Therefore the issue is not their age compared to the others in their cohort because that effect vanishes over time anyway. The data indicates that there is a damaging effect based on the absolute age at which a child starts school if this is too young.

An effect which never unwinds. It's nothing to do with competing with others in their cohort. Who cares? In 20 years they'll likely only ever see one or two of these people again at most. It is about the long-term effect on the specific child from starting school when they are too young to be doing formal learning. NOT any comparison to their peers.

And while we're at it, their peers in the UK who are 5 in Sept are also being damaged by starting too young, but just not to such a great extent as the ones who are 4. Hence them being outperformed by children in other school systems who start at 6/7 when it's more appropriate to be doing writing etc rather than playing and using their imaginations.

Sorry that should have said peers in England starting school at 5 in Sept, not UK.

Deferring is a great option when a child needs it - where they have disabilities, or a very disrupted childhood, or are premature. To do it just to gain an advantage just seems a bit wrong personally. Someone has to be the youngest....

The aim usually isn't to gain advantage. People defer to prevent their child being disadvantaged. That’s usually the primary motivation I would think ( though you could of course argue it's two sides of the same coin). I think it's harsh to judge people for not wishing to disadvantage their children. And summer-borns are indeed disadvantaged in the present school system unfortunately.

The idea you can't challenge a child aged 4-6 with learning that doesn't involve writing etc is baffling. Before ever learning to read or write my kids understood some basic principles of physics, volume displacement, gravity, were looking through telescopes at space, examining things with microscopes, learning how plants grow and about photosynthesis, osmosis, temperature and how this can turn gas to liquid to solid, how light refracts, the water cycle, how magnetism works, how electricity works. Not because any of this was pushed on them: because these were questions they asked based on thoughts they came up with from play and normal interaction with their environment. Also some philosophical questions about where the universe came from and how it started and what happens when we die and Descarte's meditations (how do we know this isn't a dream?) and the Fermi Paradox come up with independently. 😆 None of this required sitting at a desk writing or learning phonics. And obviously lots of time in between all of these questions they asked just racing around being silly and pretending to be a cat or a unicorn and giggling and making dens out of cardboard boxes or making hideous sounds on various "musical instruments". As they should be. Why do we want to crush children into a routine of conformity and dress them up like little identikit robots and make them sit at a desk all day and dictate what they should be thinking about when they are 4 or 5? It's nuts.

How everything that exists is made up of a small number of elements in different combinations, why does a plane fly and not fall out of the sky? Dinosaurs and what happened to them. Why are there so many different animals and why do some live in one place and not in another? Why does a boat float? Why do we wash our hands? Why are there seasons?

Children have enquiring minds and learn through play in a natural way and just interacting with the world around them and ask inquisitive questions and are full of wonder at everything and then go off and play and make up games about it and it feeds yet more imagination. But no, we mist crush it out of them as soon after their 4th birthday as possible. So depressing.

I don’t disagree with you, but Reception is all learning through play… they do very little at their tables. Some writing on slates at the carpet, but mostly play-based learning.

Yes, but then... (for summerborn kids especially) at just turned 5 spending so much of their week doing far more formal learning and expected to do SAT exams before they even turn 6! Making 5 year olds do exams when they should be just playing and exploring. It's so sad.

Sats are end of year 2, even the youngest child will be almost 7. Nobody is doing Sats aged 5.

And KS1 SATS are being phased out

Not true.

That too! 🤣

Sorry yes, the younger ones would be 6 doing their first exams, not 5. Still way too young for anybody to have ever thought that was age appropriate. Who comes up with these bonkers ideas?

And the exams tbh are a side issue, just emblematic of the problem (glad to hear it is being phased out though - our school had not informed us of that. When is it being abolished?). It's more the whole setup of having kids from age 5 (start of YR1) doing so much formal learning. It's not age appropriate and we can see in the data the long-term negative effects this has that simply do not exist in systems that start this later - and get better academic as well as mental health outcomes for children as a result.

So what is the point in starting so early? It's been known for years that the UK is a massive outlier on this so I don't really understand why it hasn't been changed despite all the evidence of how it not only doesn't improve outcomes but actively makes them worse. It's weird to persist with something that is so counterproductive. And then when one small concession like the deferral option for the worst affected kids - the youngest starters - is implemented, lots of people object to it!

The whole idea of forcing children into this very regimented environment and restrictive routine at such a young age is really counterproductive, then this over-focus on reading and writing and maths early on that squashes out much of the space for imagination and creativity. I do think it's really sad and probably destroys the joy of learning for many children.

KS1 SATS will be optional next year

And, with one teacher and maybe one TA to 30 kids, when they do have such thoughts and questions occur to them, there'll be mobody with the time to actually sit and explain the answer to them anyway. Not on the curriculum? Sorry. Time to move on to the next planned thing. All rather depressing. Dressed up like mini-adults and expected to conform to a timetable and someone else's plans, like they won't have enough of that during their 50+ year working lives!

That's really good news: that's when my son would be due to do them. So we can just opt out? Or the school gets to opt in or out on behalf of all of their pupils?

@Clairebear231

For what it’s worth, my mum taught 6-yr-olds and said the more mature kids - the older ones - always did better.
Make of that what you will.

@PTSDBarbiegirl I find it a bit odd that you mention things like when they are 18 and won't be able to join in drinking with friends as no ID - every school year group spans a complete year so you'll always have that situation if a June born child is in a friendship group with an October born child. Deferring makes no difference, it actually just makes the potential age gap in a class more than 12 months. I'm completely in favour of deferring in the right set of circumstances but at what point in the year someone can legally drink or have sex should have absolutely no baring on deferring school age 4. DD couldn't even drink during freshers week at uni as she was a year ahead (not Scotland where there can be many 17 year olds), it wasn't, nor should it have had any baring on her moving up a year 10 years previously.

OP asked for opinions so here is mine:
You're projecting too much about excel and not struggle etc.

He's ready to learn now. He will have bad moments and those will happen whether he goes now or late. You don't have the control over this process that you think you do.

But most of all, I'd keep him with his current friendship group as much as possible. Success at school is mostly about the social life.

More on redshirting.

Honestly. These posts are bonkers. Not least because people think anecdata =/= data.

I assume you mean "people think anecdata = data".

Besides, OP asked "has anyone not deferred a bright child and regretted it, or vice versa". So to be fair, anecdotes and personal experiences are what she's asked for.