does anyone know how an English school would place ds?

[ilovespinach]

ds is 5.10.

At the moment we live in a country where formal education starts at 6 so ds is due to start in the autumn. He attends kindergarten in the mornings but this is all play based so no reading, writing etc

With dh's job it's now a possibility that we have to move back to England. Does anyone know how the school would place him? Children of his own age in England will have been going to school for close on 2 years and will be able to read/write etc Would they place him with his peers and provide extra support while he 'caught up' or place him with younger children?

Thanks

In the state sector, it'll be with his age cohort. If I've counted right, that would put him in year 1 now (starting year 2 in September).

As reception is a play-based curriculum (google for EYFS for info), you might find he's not so far adrift in many areas. You will need to talk to prospective schools quite carefully about how they would integrate him, but it's not an uncommon scenario.

Thanks very much :)

Hi ilovespinach

We had a french boy join our school last year at age 7 in a similar situation. He joined Y3 right from french kindergarten with very little reading skills or English - poor mite. Fortunately a few children in the class take a French class after school (including my DD) and so they tried to help - but 3/4 months later - it was like he'd always been there. He really did adapt very quickly.

I would suggest if you know you are going to move to start gently building up some skills to prepare for Y2 - try to look into building up phonics skills to help with reading.

BBC Alphablocks www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/alphablocks/

& the jolly phonics schemes jollylearning.co.uk/ are very good.

You can buy jolly phonics workbooks through amazon UK www.amazon.co.uk/Jolly-Phonics-Workbooks-Books-1-7/dp/1870946502/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1328037160&sr=8-1

and the songbook is useful too! www.amazon.co.uk/Jolly-Songs-Phonics-Laurie-Fyke/dp/1844140695/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1328037160&sr=8-2

Then - I suggest you try and read with your DS as much as possible - gradually encouraging him to start sounding out.

With maths - again simple workbooks - working on addition and subractions (start 1 - 10 and maybe go on to numbers up to 30) over the summer are a great help. We've used on-line resources like BBC Learning KS1 maths: www.bbc.co.uk/schools/teachers/keystage_1/topics/maths_ks1.shtml

also BBC KS1 Bitesize games: www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks1/

You'll have to explore a bit to find things that are appropriate - but counting games (snakes and ladders) are great to just start to learn about counting on or taking away (snakes & ladders played backwards). You can also play counting games with raisins (or other small foods - grapes, sweets, etc...) - What happens if you add 1? add 2? add 3? What happens if you eat 1? eat 2? eat 3?

When you contact the school and have made them aware of the situation - I'm sure you can raise with them the question of what you can do to help smooth the transition to Y2 in the English system.

There's no getting around that next year will be a hard year for him - with a very steep learning curve - but children are amazingly resilient. I'm sure with your support and encouragement, he'll make the adjustment fine.

Are you in Germany by any chance? There was a girl in DD1's nursery who went across to the UK with her parents for 1 year when she was 5, and as in your case she had had no formal education AND to make it worse she spoke very little English. She went straight into her age appropriate group - Y1 - and caught up so quickly that when she came back to Germany a year later she was moved up a year.

The transfer between British and Continental systems seems most tricky for this 4-7 age group. My DC went to school at 6, 2 years behind the British system and had completely caught up with reading/maths by the time they were 8/9. But before that they were definitely 'lagging behind' UK kids of the same age.

Depending on the area you move to, many schools will have experience of similar children, including those with English as a second ( or non-existant!) language in addition to no prior schooling. Bu as others have said, it is amazing how quickly children pick up both language and academic skills. Does your child speak English ( sorry, it's not clear from your post!) of so, I wouldn't worry too much. Just support the school and help out at home with reading and phonic skills and you will be well away!

I wouldn't worry too much. I have taught children coming into school at Y2 from European kindergartens. They do catch up remarkably quickly - and these are children with no English either. Having taught in a Kindergarten overseas I'm a firm believer in their approach to early years education and not starting formal education too soon. You may well find that your son flies ahead of his peers in the UK as he is ready to read and write now, rather than a year earlier when some of his less-ready peers started to learn. This was certainly the case with a very determined German boy I taught a few years back - he left Y2 at the top end of the class in all subjects. The school I worked at was very very used to children turning up at all ages with no formal school experience (and no English) so I would check with your choice of school as to if they have experience of children coming from different school backgrounds.

DS1 was at Kindergarten at an international school, based on the US system (but not in the US). We returned to the UK just before his 6th birthday, and he went into Y2 half way through the year. He had extra support - along with about half of the class from what I could gather - for the rest of Y2, but caught up quickly and has done fine. The biggest problem was his handwriting, as he missed out learning how to form letters correctly (DS2 was doing that in YR and Y1).

I hope the move back goes well.

My ds was at a kindergarten in Germany and we returned to the UK when he was 5.11 and joined Y1.

I started teaching him phonics when we knew that we were returning. As he was older and learning one to one , it did not take long to teach him single letter sounds. We spent 15 minutes a day reading and writing (after Kindergarten). He was lower than average when we got back to the UK but he had lots of help from the school (and me) and he was higher than average within 6 months.

Thanks for all the replies....we are in Germany but DH and I are English so at least the language isn't a problem:) There are lots of great suggestions here to keep us going now we just have to make a decisions about what to do...