August born kids swapping to year below?

[Traynorbird]

My daughter is 7 days off the deadline and is due to start in reception this coming September. Does anyone know if its possible for her to start a year later?

We are living in the states at the moment and have missed the application cut off for schools, so we'll be taking whats left over. I'm concerned about her starting school only a week after her 4th birthday, she is pretty average in most ways, but her speech is a little behind - we had her assessed here and they said she was borderline. Her personality is one that does not cope well with making little mistakes and I'm really worried about her starting school. I hear that there is a massive emphasis on phonics and due to her speech issues that makes me even more concerned.

Anyone know if I can keep her in nursery for an extra year? Or start her in January instead? Any thoughts on how similar kids have coped with reception?
Aaaaargh! etc...

It does depend on the school. She needs to be there term before her 5th birthday, but then she would only have a term of reception and go straight to year 1

August born babies legally can skip Year R and join directly into Year 1.

You can accept the school place and defer her entry until after Easter, if you wish, but you must take up the place by then or lose it.

If you are unhappy with the allocated school you could keep her on the waiting list for your preferred schools and hope she gets in befire starting.

She can stay in nursery til she starts school.

But she cannot go into the year below except in exceptional circumstances.

Please remember one sixth of the class on average will have birthdays between 1 July and 31 August. It won't be her and 29 five year olds, plus reception staff are able to deal with all the kinds if things you mention.

As others have said, if you defer a year your daughter will almost certainly go straight into Y1. She will still be the youngest in the class and you will have a limited choice of schools as most will already be full. You do, however, have the right to defer until later in the 2014/5 academic year.

It may be worth you taking a look at Reception in operation. You should find that it is very similar to nursery. Both follow the same curriculum.

My son was born last day of August so is the youngest. When he started reception I had the option to start him anytime before he was 5 (i.e By start of following September term.yr1) I chose to start him at the beginning when he had just turned 4.
This is because the class was smaller as children were starting at different terms, (so to start wit it was smaller than the nursery he was leaving)

To cut a long story short I felt it was best he had longer time adjusting to where he would be permanently, than to keep him somewhere he was would leave relatively soon anyway.

So although emotionally it is sometimes evident he is younger than his peers, I am glad i made that decision as it gave him a good year getting to know is peer group with a fab early years teacher who he still gets excited about.

If you are coming to Scotland she wouldn't start until 4y11m (August start here) due to different admission dates. but I suppose thats not an option. ~Here, the admission year is the calendar year (noone starts before 4y6m) and you can defer without skipping a year if the child's birthday is Dec/Jan/Feb (my dd1 and ds started at 5y6m).

You can ask,but in my experience its not possible. We contemplated a move to London, but phone calls to LEAs told us our children would automatically be moved up a year, even if that wasnt to their benefit. Its one of the biggest reasons we didn't move, in the end!

I thought this had changed recently and you CAN argue your case to enter reception a year later ? I vaguely remember a thread on it?

www.education.gov.uk/aboutdfe/advice/f00227046/advice-on-the-admission-of-summer-born-children

This was summer last year so fairly new.
"there is no statutory barrier to children being admitted outside their normal year group"

Ds is July born, and would be given consideration to delay entry (ie go into yr R a year late, as opposed to deferring entry and going straight into yr 1) - but this is because he has additional needs, and as such there are exceptional circumstances (eg he has no speech at all).

When our dds started, there were quite a few children younger (dd1 is March, dd2 May) - yr R is so like preschool, that there didn't seem to be any problem with the youngest in year - it is a really gentle, play based start to school, ime.

A friend of mine has a DS with a similar birthday, due to start this September. He has no additional needs, is just a little young for his age, but she has had it agreed by the school and LA that he can defer and start reception next year. I'm afraid I don't know all the ins and outs but it was originally suggested to her by his pre school, and until then she had no idea it was even an option.

She has had to go back and forth between the school and LA but I think ultimately it was up to school and they were very supportive.

I would be wary about deferring entry - it would be very hard for a child to go straight from nursery to Y1 where they are expected to start knuckling down to the academic side.

Reception is very gentle and the staff are very used to dealing with summer babies and children of all different abilities and different developmental stages.

I'd even be wary about a deferred start to Reception. The child would be going into a situation with established friendship groups and having missed out on all the very initial learning stages. In my mind this would be much harder than being there right from the start.

My DD was in a primary school nursery for a year before going into Reception. It was a full school day and the children were aged from just 3 to just 4 - all of them coped brilliantly which was very reassuring for Reception. The staff expected that some would fall asleep occasionally (there were cushions in a corner for this) and had vast quantities of spare clothes for all the accidents - the same is true of the Reception classes.

We deferred entry to Reception until Easter. It worked for my DS, who does have additional needs, as he matured so much in that time. He started at 4 y10m. He is emotionally and socially delayed compared to his peers so it suited him, and worked out very well for us.

A couple of years on (and from a few months in) no-one would know he'd not started with his peers.