August born baby

[navalpenguin]

Hi

I think this topic has been done to death, however I hope you will indulge me.

My baby is due on the 31st of August.

Firstly, would this mean he would be the oldest, or the youngest on his entry into reception (on Wikipedia it says "Age of the 31st August").

Secondly, as a parent can I choose when and into which year he starts school. So if I wanted him to go into reception and be potentially one year and one day older than another child in the same year, could I choose to do this? Or would he have to start a year later and go into Year 1, still almost a year younger than a potential classmate?

If the answer is no, has this ever been challenged through the courts and if necessary to the European Court of Human Rights.

As I understand it, the cut off date is 1st Sept so if your dc arrives on its due date, it would be the youngest in the class. But I think that you would be able to defer his/her entry to the next year.

If your dc is born in August - then will enter school as the youngest in the year, having had fourth birthday and goes of to school. Though I would possibly keep chidl out of school until 5 the following year if they where in a good nuresery set up..but until you knwo the dc etc there is no way of second guessign this

If your dc is born on the 1st of september then will be the edest in the class.

A few years backthere was a mother who had twins and one was born on the 31st and the other on the 1st of sept - she was told she will not have the choice and one child will always be in the year above the other

31st August will be the youngest in the class, and no, in England you can't choose which year your child goes into school - you can choose to miss reception, but then they'd start in Y1 the following year. I beleive you cna choose in Scotland, no idea about Wales/N Ireland.
Other option is to home ed, and choose school (or not) at a later point.

FWIW DD1 is 26th August, and hasn't had major difficulties, she has been at points a good bit "younger" socially than her friends, but now it's evened out a lot, although she's the last one of her group to be starting driving lessons, which is annoying her at present.

Your DC would be the youngest in the school year.

As I understand it, you could defer entry to school for a year, but then dc would go to Year 1, to keep them with their cohort.

I am not sure about any legal challenges.

I have a similar issue - baby due 12 Sept but midwife expecting I might go into labour imminently so could be august baby.

Fwiw, I'm a sept baby and my dh is an august baby - same academic year as me but nearly a whole year younger. Never held him back academically, a lough was never quite so good at rot as he was always so small, and he is still ridiculously overachieving! So I'm more relaxed about it as i know it is not really the doom and gloom that is often portrayed particularly after the first year or so But it is a bit weird that my baby could be either youngest or oldest in school just based on perhaps a few hours difference in when she's born!

I still wish they would change the school year ages to 1st July, then at least the dc going into school would be at least 2 months older than they can be now. I would make it easy to start the temr after your 4th birthday and probably make it easier for th eteachers to have all the dc slightly older

It would just mean children born on the 30th of June would be a year younger than their eldest classmate

Yes that part would be the same - but the dc would be older when they started and this can make a differnece.

As a reception teacher of many years I honestly can't see any real advantage sorry...sometimes it's difficult to tell who is the eldest and who is the youngest in a reception class as every child is different and often the eldest can be the least school ready.

Oh I see - well when my dd was going into reception is was really clear who where the older chidldren and who where the 5 younger children, fortunatley we were allowed to do things a bit different and this helped the younger dc and the teachers. It must have been different children though as you say, the older children in that particular reception class were certainly mature which stuck out with our younger children with july and august birthdays.

My dd2 is a november baby and was very different with her being much older when she started school.

i can only go by the two chidlren I hae and they must be different from your experiances - that is why for me the two months would have been a better option

I've taught some very babyish September borns and some very mature, able August borns (as well as the reverse)so never have expectations based on birth months.

I thought so.

But I can't beleive that this policy hasn't been challeged through the courts.

It may well have been challenged but if so unsuccessfully

But what is there to challenge? Your child has a right to an education, and the state is providing that education. You can choose to send them to Reception at age 4, or to Year 1 at age 5. I don't like the system, and I don't think it's the best way to do it, but what legal challenge can you put up to say it should be changed? The system isn't infringing any rights that you or your child have.

(But our system up here in Scotland is much better )

A good point AmuminScotland
compulsory education begins the term after a child's fifth birthday so "free full time education" before this is provided by the state as a "bonus" for many parents who would be paying for childcare for time over the 15 hours nursery provision

my DS is 3 today....so starts school next sept having just turned 4......
Though he was never deliberately planned to be an august baby, ther positives are;

• he benefits maximally from the government funded childcare (until this is changed under new government )
• as a working mother, it meant less childcare costs, as starts school well before he is 5
• he has attended nursery full time since 10 months...he loves it. He is used to a wide range of stimulating/learning activities and in my opinion will be ready for school next year, and going to nursery has helped prepare him.

Only disadvantage i can see is that physically he will be weedier....however is a demon dribbler (football) so will hold his own.......

due on the 31st?.....you'll either have a youngest or an eldest in the school year, and each comes with positives and negatives, and am sure you will prepare your DC for whichever scenario you are in, in the best possible way...

Your baby is not even born yet, she may be born at the end of August and very ready to go to school at 4, or be born in September and quite young even at 5. It depends so much on the personality of the child.

If it helps you worry less I'll add in the totally unscientific fact that most of my friends at Cambridge were summer (May or later) babies.

Wait and see when your baby is born before you start worrying about anything. I was so smug when pg with DD1 my due date was 6th September. She was a week early , so will be the youngest in her year (she's 3 on Monday so will start in Reception Sept 2011). Emotionally she is pretty mature and she is very tall and also bright, so I think she will be ok, but we are fortunate to be privately educating her so she will have the benefit of smaller class sizes, which I think will help enormously.

A friend's DD has her birthday at the beginning of September and will therefore be the eldest in her year. She is phenomenally bright and my friend is desperate for her to start school a year early, probably for very good reason.

Good luck anyway - hope the birth goes well

your child doesn't have to be at school full time before they reach the age of 5 as the extra bonus is not law, so your chidl could attend school three or four days per week and you could home school if you wished or both

naval,

my son is one of the minority of August-born children for whom starting reception a year later was a big, big, big deal. Only a minority of August-borns suffer long-term effects (it's those at the extremes who make the statistical evidence such grim reading). So I do think it would be premature to worry about it yet. It's the August borns who are immature for their own birth month, not the ones who are merely and predictably immature compared to kids a year older, that we need to worry about I think, because those immature August-bron kids face a double whammy. Add in any kind of additional needs and you can make that a triple whammy.

I am not aware of any legal challenge, but had Bradford Council not agreed to allow my son to start reception at 5 years 11 days, then I would have been researching this as a possibility. However, private education, moving to Scotland or even moving to the USA would have been more realistic options for us - probably cheaper!

Look me up in 2 1/2 years time (no later, these battles take time) if it turns out that this is a real issue for you. There's a 90% chance it won't be I suspect.

By the way, though, I don't agree with some of the earlier comments. my son's father, extended family, nursery manager, senco, headmistress, speech therapists and paediatrician are united in agreement with me that deferring his start in reception by a year has transformed his life chances, and even Sir Jim Rose, the man who slammed the door on making year-deferral a routine choice, has admitted (on mumsnet no less!) that he never meant there to be no exceptions to the rule. There are only a few kids for whom this is a big deal long term - my son just happpened to be one of them.

Hi Lingle

Thanks for that.

So you are saying that your child did indeed start reception "out of sync" and was in the "wrong" year group as it were?

As for the other comments: it is about parental choice. The state should not be imposing it's will on families in this way. Parents should choose when their kids start school, not the Secretary of State.

Hi Naval,

I do agree in principle about choice. My friends from the Czech Republic think it is bizarre that my peers spend so much time worrying about where their child will go to school but assume it is ok to effectively have no choice whatsoever about when their child will go to school. In Prague, people consider the bigger choice to be whether to start at 6 or 7. In Scotland, you choose between 4.5 and 5.5. Even in the USA with its "do it early" culture, kids don't start till 5.

DS2 was due to start school in September 2009, having been born in August 2005. Thanks to the efforts of some enlightened councillor a decade or so ago, Leeds and Bradford LEAs had a policy in place allowing parents of summer-borns to choose between starting reception in the default year and starting it a year later (ie at 5.0). Sadly, they no longer follow this policy although I managed to delay the change until DS2's position was secure.

So Ds2 is now just 5, has always just been in the nursery, and will start reception as the oldest in his year the week after next.

I'm looking forward to him starting school. A year ago, it would have been very very different.

DS2's development has been atypical and he had a severe imbalance in the way he processed sound which made it hard for him to learn language. This had a knock-on effect on his ability to interact with his peers. So the teachers have used this "extra" nursery year to get him practising social interaction with appropriate peers. The appropriate peers for this child were the ones his age and younger - the ones his age and older would have eaten him for breakfast.

He's ready to learn now, and is about to have a joint birthday party with his best friend.

If he'd had typical development, I don't know if I'd have had the courage to exercise the choice to defer him. I certainly wouldn't have fought to keep the choice available. There is so much pressure to follow the herd.

Anyway, maybe you will go overdue. If not, your little one may be quite mature for his or her age and you may feel he/she would enjoy reception at 4.0 in the right setting. You are unlikely to be in my position. If you are though, I suspect I will still be following summer-born threads in a couple of years' time!

The others have already stated the law so won't do that again. Only to ay I have 2 August borns (1 day apart from each other 2 yrs apart). They are ok as far asI know.

Anyway, my real point. There is a set of twins in DS's class who are end of August a whole yr before DS (i.e they are a yr older). They were very prem and evidently some leeway was allowed! I only found out cos another mum told me when I said that they were younger than DS... (and I looked at the DOBs on their school lists as they were displayed for all to see). So SOME allowances are made. It's just rare.

As Lingle has said, I think it's the minority of summer born dc who have long term problems. My dd is July born and immature for age, and she has had problems despite no obvious SN or SEN. She just wasn't ready to start school at little over 4. She is making progress now - her current school have been good - but she still has a fair bit of ground to make up. She's always been at the bottom of the class, which is a shame as she'd do much better if she were in the class below! She also gets on better with younger children socially.