Would you defer a summerborn simply because you could?

[Goatcoat]

This was the advice given to me by a child learning practitioner (not a teacher but a specialist who works in schools). They said to "always defer if you can, even if you think your summerborn could cope fine... Better to be one of the eldest than one of the youngest".

My DC2 is a summerborn (not school age just yet though) and the above comments are playing on my mind.

We can afford the extra year of childcare, and having seen my nephew struggle as a summerborn, I must admit it's something I'm considering. DC2 is a bright little thing if I do say so myself! so I am imagining that we would be doing it purely because we could rather than because we'd need to. Education is very important to me and whilst I don't necessarily want DC to be top of the class, I want to give them the best possible start in life. It feels like deferring would do that, whereas not deferring would possibly make me doubt/worry/question whether I'd done the wrong thing.

Lifestyle wise not deferring makes things easier having less of a school year gap between the DC. And I imagine they will be closer if there is a smaller gap... But... But.... But... DC might be "fine" if we don't defer, but "amazing" if we did.

Can deferring be a bad thing??

I was "ahead" of my peers in primary and it was awkward. I could read the whole reading book that was supposed to last weeks on one sitting. I wasn't really "g&t" I just learned fast in primary so was off the top of the scale. I was an A student in secondary and then pretty average at uni.
Being ahead at primary wasn't an advantage.

I wouldn't defer a summer born who seemed ready and was restless at nursery.

lizs I'm talking about deferring reception until age 5.

There have been numerous studies about summer/winter borns and A levels/university.

But most of these studies (a) don't take into account the actual number of years of education and (b) demonstrate pretty small differences in A level outcomes. Point (a) is quite relevant, as in many studies the summer born children studied started school mid way through the first year and therefore received less education.

I have a summer born and would absolutely not have deferred. (I could have done, since DC attends private school.) My DC would have been insanely bored being the oldest in the year below. In my DC's year group several of the highest achieving (and indeed several of the most mature) children are summer born.

Calling it "deferral" is a red herring. It's really about wanting equality of opportunity, regardless of the time of year a child is born.

But any system with year group cutoffs will have older and younger children. Holding the child back doesn't give equality of opportunity, it gives the "advantage" of being the oldest. By definition, not all children can have that "advantage".

(And for bright children being the oldest may well not be an "advantage" at all. I don't think it's only the brightest 0.01% who would get bored.)

the thing is at under 4, well just 3 when applying, you often wouldnt know about some disability which could mean they should have been held back.
at least if april were the youngest everyone would be older, above 4.4.
some people are planning dc so they are winter born to get advantage. that is worse at disadvantaging others.and could mean there are fewer sumnerborns so they stand out.
also if your argument is it doesnt matter then why not move it. if it doesnt matter april borns wont be disadvantaged.
if a child is 6m behind average but august born, they would only be mid of the yr below. whereas a sept born would only be like a march born of their yr so still seem very good.
the difference of expectations between 4 and 5 is big, a summer born leaving preschool could meet those targets but not be able to progress to reading/writing, whereas this would be identified at nursery for a winter born and they benefit from targetting it with much lower ratios, like 1:6 maybe.
wonder how much harder to control a class of summer borns would be than winter borns
its not intelligence, its behaviour, these kids have less time at preschool 3 terms rather than 5, less time potentially 1-2-1 with adults, sibs. it can set up a negative cycle at school with misbehaviour.
how does it affect you socially though, if you are always more immature, not making friends, so learn less of that skill so it continues.
i want to be able to easily defer, dd is not going to be ready.
nursery kept her in the bottom group, with yr below students until xmas, she could do with those extra 2 terms she is missing.
will school just group the youngest, or not behaving despite intelligence?
an august born has to operate at 6m above their level to even be average.

For those saying the whole system needs to be less formal there is a petition to parliament to Extend the Early Years Foundation Stage from "birth to 5" to "birth to 7" - it has over 7,000 signatures in 2 days so quite a few but not 'viral'.

For my August born (slightly prem) ds I did home educate him until he was 7 as I didn't feel he was ready at 4 - when he started school he was in the 'correct' year for his age and he has gone on to do well, he is in Y12 now with good GCSEs and looking like even better AS/A Levels.

I don't know what I would do if making the decision now though as although the law hasn't changed schools have more or less been told they have to accept children being put down a year if they are born in April-August and their parents want it. In that situation an August baby could be in a class with children 16 months older than him or her so it is even harder than before.

I didn't find receptions worked that way at all and ability grouping was not done on age but ability. And if you lined them all up you would be hard pressed to guess who were the summer horns and who the Autumn borns by size and behaviour

And the naughtiest kids in dd's class were all Autumn born with one summer born in the mix!

It is very much down to how the school deals with it and how ready the child is

..an August baby could be in a class with children 16 months older than him or her so it is even harder than before..

^ This worries me. So my seemingly bright DC might not need^ to defer in that they are seemingly 'ready for school' but if other children have deferred my DC could be the youngest by 15/16 months, which is a huge gap and I'd find it hard to feel confident they weren't somehow disadvantaged...

although the law hasn't changed schools have more or less been told they have to accept children being put down a year if they are born in April-August and their parents want it

Not everywhere has paid attention, unfortunately. Many local admissions authorities are still refusing to give 5 year olds a reception place, offering only year 1 entry instead. It's basically a postcode lottery.

The summer born campaign (@sb_campaign) regularly tweets updates from parents about decisions received from admissions authorities. The discrepancy from place to place is huge

"I do feel that some parents (especially when they are applying for school places and their child is just 3 yo) underestimate both how much their children will develop between applying for a school place and starting in the Sept and how adaptable and capable their children will prove to be, given the right support at home and school.
I am also surprised at how formal schooling in reception is believed to be (I don't know if this is because many schools are too formal or if people remember their own school days sitting at desks), when the reception classes I've seen are very similar to the nursery settings children attend the year"

I agree with this. As a parent of two summerborns, and auntie to two more (all coming from a variety of pre school settings) I have been amazed by how gently reception can settle children in and by how much the children get out of it. I worried enormously about my ds - I posted on here at the time! - but it worked out very well. I think the choice of school matters enormously.

I'd take professional advice. I'd think about it but I'd reflect on my child and how I thought they'd cope. It really really depends on the child. I was one of the youngest in my year (late July baby). I also was one of the best in my primary and secondary schools, sailed through oxford with a top first bla bla bla. I was bored through quite a bit of primary school (less so secondary). Being held back a year would have been horrid - in fact they kept wanting to move me up. In my group of school friends that's a fairly typical history - my four closest friends all went to oxbridge and we are all summer babies.

Interesting!

DH and I are summer born with strong academic ability. Our elder two DC count as summer born although only one is genuinely summer and the other is April.

There is absolutely no way we would have considered deferring based on averages and general advice. The DC were absolutely ready for school at 4 and that was obvious before the applications deadline. It helps that the school has an excellent EYFS department who genuinely "learn through play" in a very gentle and child-focused way, as they wouldn't have been ready for lines of desks/worksheets/face the front school.

Bluntly, DC1 is top of the class. There is one child who challenges him. If he were in the year below, there would be nobody.

This is essentially what happened to DB, September baby. Every other year in our small primary, in the middle of a two-year class, he was challenged. As the oldest, he was not, and it had a serious effect on his motivation and happiness.

There are sporting advantages to being the eldest in the class, but my children get most of those by being tall for their age.

I think most parents make decisions in their children's best interests. I think though that purely strategic deferral could disadvantage many children (those unnecessarily deferred and those unsuitably left in their chronological year) and so I think it's a bad thing for parents to have total control over.

Interestingly Goat, we are at the 11+ stage and one of the schools that tests states that the results are adjusted for age.

The Trafford schools we've looked at say this, but with a little digging I calculated that the adjustment is only about 1% between the oldest and youngest children. It means where two children score the same the younger ranks higher, but scarcely more.

Disclaimer: informal digging, I'm not involved.

I believe this would have made a massive difference for my very young for his year DS. It was really the difference in physical and emotional maturity that was most noticeable and the effects of this showed most at secondary

I have a summerborn, who was still napping, socially immature and tiny when she started YR. if I could have deferred I probably would have, but it would have been the wrong decision. She's flying academically, and the social stuff has really started working for her (with support from school) in Y3. She would have loved another year of preschool, and maybe a later YR, but the formal curriculum would have been tricky to manage once she hit Y1. Even now, school is having to do quite a bit of differentiation for her (and they do it well), but it does set her apart and I'm glad it's not even more noticeable.

I wouldn't. DS is mid August and was very ready for school. No reception, he went straight into Yr 1 at 5 from his nursery where he had been since aged 18m.
In Yr2 they had mixed yr1&2 classes and 1 pure yr2, and some parents complained that their DC were I the mixed class when my younger DS was in the pure Yr2 class!
He did extremely well academically and his only real grouch was from aged 17+ when last to learn to drive, go to pubs & clubs etc. At his internship last summer his colleagues were shocked to learn he was still a teenager, but they still offered him a permanent job for this year.

I do know of others who have held children back with great success too, and in their circumstances I would have too. Each child should be looked at as an individual. The cut-off has to be somewhere.

Honestly? I think you're just making it someone else's problem.

If we are concerned that our education system cannot support children to start school when prescribed, we should focus on changing that. How long until September borns become the ones disadvantaged?

My dd's birthday is 26th August, so a very late summer born. She's now 10 and about to start secondary in September. She's a very bright and confident child and is at the top of her primary school class. Had I deferred, she would be bored to tears. She was ready to go to primary school when she went and is now ready to go to secondary. I would not have deferred even if I could have done. The only thing that is noticeable is that she is physically small compare with many of her classmates, but then they are all shapes and sizes!

Someone posted this piece earlier from a teachers' site. There's a section that sums up this thread perfectly:

Like a pointillist picture, it is only when you step back from focusing on the individual that the entire image emerges.
Ellen Greaves, research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, is one of the co-authors of a series of studies on birthdate effect. She says that any discussion on the subject inevitably begins with someone saying: “Well, my child was born in August and is incredibly successful.”
But she says it is worth emphasising that the relationship is an average. “It is not the case that every August-born child will be below every September-born child. But, on average, this is the relationship we see,” she continues. “When you look at a large sample the differences are clearly there. We had national test data on all children in England and survey data covering 10,000 to 14,000 children. The differences are stark.”

If we are concerned that our education system cannot support children to start school when prescribed, we should focus on changing that.

Exactly

Well, yes. The fact that on average a child benefits from being in the oldest third of a class doesn't tell us whether a particular child will do so; the fact that a particular child was ready for school at 4 years and 1 day doesn't tell us whether all August-born children will cope.

The thread asks, would we automatically defer our summer borns, and the answer has been "no, because it wouldn't have suited my particular child". That doesn't mean that no child should defer.

My DD is late August born (was due mid September) and will start reception this year. I think she is ready and will enjoy going to school she doesn't talk about anything else so no, I wouldn't defer.

Someone has to be the youngest and I think there are pros as well as cons. She's less likely to be bored, and will hopefully learn lots from being with older children.

I suppose based on the statistics yes, she's likely to be slightly disadvantaged academically, but academic achievement isn't everything!

I would defer without a doubt. The benefits follow the child all the way through school.

Whilst it may be better for the individual summer born child to defer, as a whole, if it becomes the norm rather than as exceptions, it surely will do more damage than good. Whilst at the moment the largest age gap is 12 months, if a significant proportion of people deferred, that's 17 months in total, harsh for Spring babies.

Personally, I think all schools with more than one class per year should split the year into ages (eg a two class intake year would have a 6 month spread in each class). Surely this would solve some issues.

Please remember that the compulsory school age is 5 years in the UK. If you want your child to start school at 5 then this is your choice as a parent. Successive Governments have tried very hard in their social engineering aims to change this to 4 years. And that is the problem - reception was introduced as effective childcare to get women back to work. It may have started with good aims but has become increasingly academic - see all the recent protests about baseline testing. So parents who want their children to start school at age 5 but to benefit from the phonics teaching etc in reception (which used to start later in the school years) have to fight for that. That is the nonsense.

I absolutely regret not being able to start my summerborn boy in reception in our local state school at age 5. When he LEGALLY was required to be in education. I cant even describe on here the pain and frustration and despair that we have gone through as a family. He has SEN - you don't know that at age 3, 4, 5, 6. Behaviour was dreadful, he used to headbang on the table. Would 1 year have made a difference? I believe it would have helped him socially and in maturity. He was not ready for the formal environment of even reception. For the smug parents whose children have sailed through starting school early at age 4, have some compassion for children who are not ready. It impacts all of you - my child required so much support he nearly had a TA to himself. That was a TA who couldn't help the rest of the class. The school had to commit high levels of financial resources to helping a child, who with an extra year, may not have needed that level of expenditure. Just wrong.