Experience of skipping reception and starting primary in Year 1

[Cotswoldramble]

Our daughter will be 4 at the end of August and we've decided she won't start school this academic year. Does anyone out there have any experience of their child starting in year 1 and missing reception? Be interested to hear.

No experience, but we were thinking of it as our April born didn't seem ready for school, however we wanted him to start R a year late which wasn't possible.

He is in y2 now and in retrospect it would have been a shame to miss the Reception year because it is such a gentle and lovely introduction to school. On the other had DS was always on the immature side and slightly behind academically. With my support he is slowly catching up now. My DS would have fitted and still fits much better in the younger year group and I feel it was a shame that we couldn't defer - DS would have been so much more mature, prepared and ready to learn.

The only alternative I see would have been home educating for about 3 years so he doesn't start school behind his peers academically, on the other had he would have missed out on all the fun things and socialising too.

Legally you can do this. You may not get into your first choice of school though as all the places will be allocated in reception. So unless a child leaves in year one there won't be a place. What you can do is defer the start date to January or after Easter.

The other issue is that reception is very much based on learning through play, whereas year one is more full on learning. The transition from nursery/pre-school to year one is more marked.

As the others have said, reception is a direct follow on from nursery learning is almost all through play, generally mornings are learning based and activities such as music pe ect are in the afternoon. I know that at most schools they in the first few weeks they allow children who are not ready to come into 12:00 then leave, maybe this would work for your child, as they would not get tired from the long day and would still learn something through the play based learning used in reception class. If you go straight into year one, first of all its unlikely you will be able to go to your preferred school as the places will be full and secondly it is much more learning based far less play, and you son will feel very behind as most will have already picked up basic reading/writing/maths whereas your son will not know any of these things and this may affects his self esteem as a result/

Have you really firmly decided to do this, or could you be persuaded not to?

I have heard positive stories from others on this board.

I did not send my son to school until 5.0 but it was a no-brainer for us as we were able to start him in reception at 5.0.

I believe that year 1 is now supposed to involve more play-based learning.

It's hard - good luck.

Watching this with interest - we currently live overseas, but will be returning to Britain. next September, and DD will have to go straight into Year 1 in a UK school.

Children don't start formal schooling here until over age 6, so she won't have learned to read/write etc unless I teach her myself. I'm slightly concerned about how she will cope and wondering if I should be trying to teach her in readiness for school

What is important is the relationships they form, yes kids are adaptable, but starting in reception they will have friends and all the benefits that bring..

also which is a very important point, when we looked around the schools the reception year looked so much fun, you simply can not recreate that, and they learn a lot, like sharing, caring for others etc etc, what they learn in reception can really stand them in good stead, if you had a very well rounded child then I suppose one could leave it, but as our DS is a only son he needs to learn about how to deal with other children and the hardest lesson in that he is not the center of everyones universe, just ours :)

DD turned 4 at the end of last August and started reception just over a wk later. I was concerned - whilst she has always been intelligent, she lacks the physical skills her older peers have and she struggled to settle in nursery emotionally. She cried at nearly every drop-off, even in the summer term.

I was lucky, DD's head teacher was happy for us to work together and do part time hours/days to allow DD to settle, but my concerns were quickly allayed. DD has thrived at school and has been full-time from the beginning. Would you consider speaking to the school and discussing either a later start date (Jan or April) or part-time hours?

What I would say is YrR is part of the EYFS and the children learn through play. Starting your DD in Yr1 means that she will start on KS 1, which is far more structured and formal. You will have fewer schools to choose from - schools will not keep a place for your DD for a year, therefore you will have to be an in-year application to Yr1. This means you will only be offered a place if the school is undersubscribed for that year group.

I know it is a tough decision to make, in hindsight I am glad DD is at school.

I don't know why you would want to skip reception, it's such a lovely introduction to school! DD1 is May and very tiny and physically less capable than her peers. The school were happy for her to do half days and ease in slowly, they have nurture groups, small groups for working on motor skills and have generally been very nurturing and understanding, even with 30 in the class! DD is thriving in Y1 now but I don't think she would have managed without the introduction that YR offers.

Has your DD been offered a place? Are you happy with the school she's been offered?

i have two summer born children one july and one aug, they are my eldest 2 boys, ds1 is aug born and was not ready to start school two weeks after his 4th bday! so we kept him out and home-schooled, ditto ds2, they started school aged 9 and 6 and went into yrs 5 and yr 2 and have done just fine! now in yr 8 (high school) and yr 5 and you would never know that they didnt start in reception, its never held them back in anyway :)

The trouble is that not everyone can or wants to home educate. DD is an only child and keeping her at home would have made for a very solitary existence for her.

i have a daughter Who is 5 in mid september, she had to stay back in nursery for another year due to she wasn't aged 4 at the end of aug. Would she be able to skip reception to go to year 1?????? If so this would have defeated the object of keeping her a year behind in the first place..

Cotswold,

I would say that there are two main arguments against.

One is that you may well have an extremely limited choice of schools. The school cannot 'hold over' a place for your child to start in Year 1, so unless the school is always undersubscribed, with space in Year 1 every year, you will just get whatever school has a place at that point ... in some areas that will NOT be in a good school and may well be a long distance away.. Even if the school turns out to be undersubscribed in Reception, EVERY applicant during the Reception year will leapfrog you - so if the class has e.g. 27 children in September, a few new arrivals can scupper your chance of a place totally. My DD's class accepted its first new pupil from the waiting list / in-year application at the beginning of Year 3, as there had been NO movement amongst the original 30 for the previous 3 years.

The other issue is that in most schools, the start of Year 1 means the transition from play-based to much more formal learning. If you think that your young-for-the-year child is not ready for the start of play-based learning in September, how much less ready will she be for formal learning a year later, when all of her classmates will have worked slowly up towards it and she will have to go straight into it?

There are a couple of circumstances in which the impact wouldn't be too bad. One would be in a small school with a mixed Reception / Year 1 class. Your child could join that class as a Year 1 but access the play-based Reception curriculum for as long as needed during that year, which would hopefully prepare her for the transition to Year 2 at the end of the year.

The other circumstance where the impact might well be less would be if she has access to a fairly full-on play-based education for the Reception year, just not in school. So if, for example, you actively home educate, or if she attends a pre-school or nursery willing to take her until the end of reception, or if she attends an 'alternative' educational setting, where she would get the progression in skills and knowledge that she would need to prepare her for the beginning of Year 1

I did this! And have always wondered why more don't. It was the best thing we had ever done (DS was more ready, I got to spend more time with him before proper school took over etc). My DS's birthday is end July. He had a fantastic nursery that he loved - and for 6 months he got to be oldest one there (because so many left to go to reception). They did a few special oldest child things with him which was lovely and made him feel very special and grown up. Starting school straight into year 1 was not a problem at all (and I had thought it might be). He was emotionally ready, lots of children come and go throughout a year so although he was the only starting on the first day of term people have arrived throughout, he's made loads of friends (it's quite a large primary school so I was a bit worried) and so have I (we've all be made to feel very welcome, it's taken a while to catch up with some things that everyone knows except me). Although there is formal learning - quite frankly what I saw of reception was not that different from nursery and my DS has slotted in fine (I didn't do anything in advance to cover anything). The only thing to be concerned about might be whether or not you will get a place at the school you want - that wasn't a problem for us as the local school was only just coming out of special measures (now rated as 'good', so just shows how quickly things can change). Happy to discuss further if anyone is interested.

Thanks kw13 for your affirming message. That's really helpful to hear of your positive experience for your family. I sense instinctively that it's the right thing for her and us, am going with it - but it's very good to hear from others who've done this and that it's worked out well. I'm not worried about her starting year 1, or not having friends, or being behind, or any thing else really.. I trust that will all be ok because of the kind of girls she is.

Cotswold, Just to ask one very last time - are you absolutely sure that there will be a place for her? That is one thing that does not depend on the type of girl that she is...

hi i'm new to mumsnet, but your thoughts on leaving out the reception year is very interesting. My daughter will start in september and i have worried whethr she is ready for it. I eventually decided it was a good idea as her older sibling found reception very enjoyable in comparison to the more formal idea of work in year 1 and 2. The only problem is the transition of a full day at school from a half day one. However can i say there are a few parents i have come across who have taken their child out of school (both in nursery and and year 1) as they did not find it suitable for them and have decided to home school them until they feel they may be more ready.

I didn't start school til the term after I was 5 (Easter), it was the done thing where we lived. Educationally and developmentally it seems to have done me little harm.
But systems have changed and thanks to 'choice' , you could be left behind in a system geared up to take them from 4. My baby sister went to school from 4 (she is a late august birthday) , educationally she did absolutely fine but she was always the baby of the class but TBH so was I (we are more than a little petite in stature)
I would agree that it may be worth speaking to the teachers and see if it's possible to ease your DC in gently.
My DS is a summer birthday and will be starting in Sept but I'm not worried. He's really looking forward to it, but he's already FT at nursery so it shouldn't be a huge leap.

I am another one who recommends deferring entry to January, rather than skipping the whole Reception year. Please think about it again, OP. It's such an important year and a much gentler and smoother transition and/or introduction than from Nursery to Key Stage 1. Even now, my 9 year old DS often speaks fondly of what he remembers from Reception, which is surprisingly quite a lot.

i didn't start school until y1... so thought about it for DD1.

however - i realised she loves being with other children, so it would be better for her to go, and her speech would improve faster than if she were with me and radio 4 all day.... In fact i put her in nursery five mornings a week as soon as possible!
although she is july-born, she got to grips with school well, and i am glad that she isn't going in in september for the first time because..

1. she knows all the kids really well
2. there wouldn't be a place anyway!
3. there is a marked step-up to y1, and even though she'd have learned to read/write/do basic sums at home just the same, she wouldn't have got used to the setting
4. it gave me time to play with and indulge our youngest :)

i would say as a kid that started in year 1, it didn't put me behind at all - however i always felt an outsider to the other kids who'd had that extra year. might have done anyway of course...

I thought this was gonna be about skipping R as they won't learn a lot. So, tell me more about what they do learn. DS (due to start R 2014) can already read (and no, I didn't teach him, he just picked it up through reading books) he is bored at nursery right now. Am concerned that local 'average' school is not going to be stretching. Therefore, was not worried about basing life around him going there in 2014. Only concern is trying to get a Yr 1 place. Looking for positive and constructive help though, no having a go.

I have a friend who intended her DS to skip reception and go into yr one but she has decided to satrt him for the last term of reception so he started after Easter. She was lucky as the school had given his place away. When a place became available for the last term she took it partly to keep him a place for yr 1 and partly I think to give him some school time before starting yr 1 which is more structured than reception. I think she felt going from nursery to yr 1 would have been a big jump for him.

In DS's year (yr1) one boy started at the beginning of the year having not been to school before (came from an english speaking country where they don;t start until the equivalent of yr1) he has settled in fine though I would say he is noticeably less mature than the others and struggles more with school rules. Though of course this may be his personality.

I have no idea if any of that is helpful

Both DSs learned an awful lot in reception. DS2 is a summer baby. He has been in reception since September. He is still four. He is on stage eight for reading, knows number bonds to ten, is starting joined up writing etc. this is not a stealth brag since he is by no means the brightest in the class nor is he the most advanced. He has however covered a great deal during reception so far. I would be reluctant to miss reception unless you will cover this stuff at home prior to her starting year one. She'll catch up eventually of course but do you want her playing catch up?

Ds turned 5 in the September of his first term.Because that year's intake was over-subscribed,he was put in a Yr1 class with six other older reception children. They missed out completely on most reception activities such as sand and water play,even construction toys like lego and stickle-brix,which he loved. I know that was the school at fault,and,looking back,I should have complained. He had a difficult start,and many years later,still has self-esteem issues which I feel may be linked with that first year,where he informed me "I'm not clever like the others..." Sorry,but they need that reception year.