Why is school entry based on age at 31st Aug and not year of birth?

[Ilelo]

I?ve always wondered why this is. A friend has a DS born 1st Sept and another friend a DD born 31st Aug the following year and it doesn?t seem right they should be starting school at the same time as they are a whole year apart.

Would it not be better if it was based on year of birth so children will be at most 8+ months older than the entry age (that is January born children) and the youngest will be at most 4+ months away from the entry age (December born children).

Does anyone know the rationale behind the current system apart from the school calendar being Sept to August? I?m just curious.

it's because of the school calendar being september to august
they all even out anyway

even if it was done according to year of birth there would still be nearly a year between the eldest and the youngest children.

Surely, wherever the cut off date is, there would be the potential for one child to be one day less than a year older than another child? (if you can follow that badly put together sentence!)

No matter where you have the cut off you will always have the eldest and the youngest in the class. A lot of schools stagger entry now so there are 3 dates to start and most of them go the term after they turn 4/5.

It is just the way it happens here by the time they have been there a year or two there isn't a huge difference between the eldest and youngest. Some sept babies struggle and some august babies do really well

It's arbitrary - other countries use cut-off dates of December 31st or March 31st - but whatever you do you are going to have some children 364 days younger than the oldest in the class. Changing the cut-off date would not change that.

It's not as if everything going on in the reception classroom is targetted at a child who is precisely 5 years old, no older, no younger, and they are all different anyway.

If we used year of birth someone would be posting that a friend has a DS born 1st Jan and another friend a DD born 31st December and it doesn't seem right that they are starting school at the same time as they are a whole year apart.

There has to be a cut-off date. Wherever you put that date you will still get a one year spread between the oldest and younget in the class. In this country the cut-off date has been in line with the academic year for as long as I can remember.

There doesn't have to be a cut off date. Many countries don't have a cut off date, and school and the parents decide when kids start.....

I've always wondered why there isn't a bit more flexibility on this. Ds is a October baby & would have been ready to go to school the year before he did, meanwhile dd was due end August but came at the start of September & I was so relieved, as she certainly wouldnt have been ready for school the year before. If she'd been on time I don't know what I would have done!

I suppose the risk is that even if you had a certain amount of flexibility you still have to have some sort of cut off & you'll still get unhappy parents if that doesn't suit their dc & also you might get a few saying their dc is ready early simply to help with childcare, when it really isn't the best thing for them.

I also don't like the way preschool funding works, autumn born babies get 5 terms paid for by the government (great for my older 2,) but dd2 will only get 3 terms. But guess thats a whole other discussion.

But if they did it your way, a child born 1st January and another born 31st Dec would be starting school at the same time even though they too would be "a whole year apart".

I like the Scottish system where (if I understand it correctly) parents of children born close to the cut-off date on either side get to decide whether to start them "early" or "late" based on the individual child's aptitudes and needs.

If there was more flexibility than the govt would be in trouble wrt child benefits.

ie you'd still be in full time education but your parents not eligible for child benefit because you'd already turned 18

(Or something like that - I'm not up on benefits)

Of course there is always going to be children nearly a year older in the class. But, with school starting in September, at least the youngest children won't have just turned 4 and hopefully have that little bit of extra maturity available to them to help them learn and settle. You may scoff at a few months, but at such a young age, I think it can make a difference.

Scotland has two dates which are important -

at the start of the autumn term, if your child is 5 they start school

if they are going to be 5 by the end of the following February, they can start school but they don't have to, and could wait till the following year.

So we have more flexibility, but we also have a wider range of ages in the class, even more than a year.

We do have some flexibility in England in that you can defer entry until the start of term following the child's fifth birthday, but they will end up going into the same cohort. So an August-born child who delays entry by a year will go into Y1, missing Reception completely.

prh47bridge, no disrespect meant, but that's hardly what I'd call flexible.

"There doesn't have to be a cut off date. Many countries don't have a cut off date, and school and the parents decide when kids start....."

As someone who has experienced that system believe me it is far worse than in the U.K. I sent my Dd at 4 with and August birthday...she was in a class with some children who were 5 and a half. Then she was constantly compared to those children ( by the teacher may I add). I was told she was immature, her writing was not good enough and she lacked concentration!!! ( What 4 year old has not got those "attributes" ?The same child is now in school here, is still the youngest in the class but is doing very well. She may well have matured in the meantime but she is at least with a group of children who may be a little older but not by a year and a half.

Children do eventually catch up, ability is not related to month/birth year. As a secondary teacher the age differences in Year 7 are not as apparent, however, you do see huge differences in ability by then.

Changing from an August to December cut off would not make any difference..there will always be December birthdays and January birthdays.

Even if you had a system whereby there was a bit more flexibility so that, say, children born in July or August could choose which year to go in to , you then would have parents of June children complaining that their DC are suffering by being the youngest. If you make it that there is complete flexibility, you could end up with an even bigger age range and scope for parents to "game" the system.

That?s my point too AndiMac. Yes, there will be children almost a year apart in the same year group but they won?t be starting school with age difference being almost a year IYSWIM as they will start school in September.

E.g. if all children born in 2007 started school in Sep 2011, the Jan babies will be 4 yrs + 8 months and the Dec babies will be 3 yrs + 9 months. This is instead of the current system where in Sep 2011, children born between 1st Sep 2006 and 31st Aug 2007 will be starting together. So the Sep 2006 kids will be 5yrs old or almost and the Aug 2007 children would have only just turned 4. Oh oh, having written it down now, it comes back to the same thing ? children still end up a year apart ?

I am a product of different school systems. Though British +, I wasn?t only educated in the UK, I went through the ?year of birth? system, ?when your parents think you are ready system? and the UK system. It didn?t make much of a difference to me I don?t think except I finished school earlier than most people here as I finished in the ?when your parents think you are ready? system where you could also skip a year if the school felt you were good enough.

Some countries have 2 years worth of access so you can have children of 2 years apart.. it works fine because the teacher is more aware of the age difference and the children tends to be in the middle rather than late and young (Denmark is one of the countries where this happens)

You will always have older and younger children but I still now feel in the Uk the main problem is that we start them in schools to young. I would feel a year later would be much better.

I wish we could have 'when your parents think you are ready' system for DS who had asd. Being July born he was the youngest in his year and having a development delay of about two years, he was just not ready. Now at the age of 6, he would just fit in with the reception children, although may be physically a lot more stronger than them (not taller, just the gross motor skills).

Sorry has asd.

AndiMac - I did say "some flexibility". I agree it isn't fully flexible. What would you like to see?

Thing is, school is for many parents regarded as free childcare - and in a 'send when ready' system there could be many parents demanding that very very young children be admitted as they are 'ready for school' (we had a 3 year old and her mum on our doorstep a few weeks ago, mum demanding that daughter be admitted because 'she's clever enough to go to school and I can't pay for nursery any more')... Also, there might well be a 'my child's cleverer that your because she's in school' type of pressure on parents that could lead to younger and younger admissions.

There would have to be at the very least an 'absolute minimum age' of admission, though I agree that some flexibility (perhaps a 3 months each way leeway around the 31st August date) AFTER this minimum age would be beneficial.