Reception, at age 4, please explain to an American

[PITA5000]

Hi,

We have just moved to London from the US, we have 2 daughters age 4 and 6. We are in the process of seaking a flat in order to determine what school our 6 year old will attend. In the states children begin school in kindergarten at age 5, so had we stayed in the US my 4 year old would have stayed home with me this year. (Admittedly, many Americans send their young children to preschools or pre-kindergarten, but these cost money and we have not been in a position to pay tuition even if we had wanted to).

Would it be very, very, very, odd if I chose not to send her this year, as it has never been a part of our plan? I feel like I'm losing out on a year of her childhood that I had been counting on spending with her. I will of course be educating her at home so that she does not enter school with a deficit of knowledge. Do other Americans do similarly? Do any locals?

Thanks for your advice

Yes it was meant to be 4th

I think most schools offer half days to start with. But not for long - it's two weeks at the school I work in.

Depends on the school. My sons is straight to full days

It's just ft pre-k (with some schools offering a staggered start of mornings or afternoons only for the first month or so).
It is not usual for children to not do this pre-k/ yr r year, although it is not necessary to send her until she turns 5 (that said, it will be out of the norm and there may be less places offered - we moved back from o'seas to try to find a yr1 place and the options were limited as most key stage 1 options were full with their yr r pupils)
I am assuming that you live somewhere where you can just register for a school and they have to fit your child in? (This is the case where I am currently living). It is not the case in the uk and once a school year is full, they are unable to exceed that number in KS1.

No almost all schools will want her to start this September at 4. My son is a year older (June birthday), and started last September at 4 years and 2 months. He will be going into year 1 this September.

The main issue is that say a school has two classrooms with Max 30 per class, if this September all 60 places are taken, and nobody leaves next September then there will be no space for her to join that school in year 1.
Also as they will miss reception they will miss all the gradual learning of rules, finding friends slowing in a more play based environment. So they have reception to get use to the structure of 9-3 school etc but not the full work. Year 1 they will start expected to pretty much start straight away reading, writing, and knowing what happens at school

personally I wouldn't worry at all about the other children making friendships. friendships are very fluid at 5/6 years old and children are very accepting of new children into a class

Also the first half term of Y1 is a continuation of reception, building up to the more controlled Y1 atmosphere.

reception is only 6h a day. why not get a place and do half days until she is 5? its only a few hours and she will see what it's all about

Expectations in Y1 are a huge jump under the new National Curriculum.

I will of course be educating her at home so that she does not enter school with a deficit of knowledge.

It's not knowledge that is taught in that first year so much as social skills and how to behave in a school environment.

The things that she will miss out on, you can't teach her.

Reception classes vary in how play based they are. Reception at my DC's state school is getting less & less play based as the years go by. There is now quite a lot of formal teaching. From Mumsnet I know some receptions are nearly all play based. But if this concerns you OP, check out how formal an environment is offered by any schools you consider.

That's a bit of an overstatement Trills. I grant you that there's some herd mentality and general fitting in with strange adults and children that will be very difficult to replicate in a child who has never been outside the nuclear family, but the OP can do a lot of work on independence, self care, following multi step instructions with no micromanagement, interacting politely and intelligibly with shopkeepers, librarians etc, and of course teaching her to read and taking her through the Reception curriculum. The OP can't completely make up for everything that would happen the two missed terms, but she can go a long way towards it.

It is an overstatement, true.

But the OP's assertion that she would be "educating" her daughter so that she did not miss out on "knowledge" sounds as if she has completely the wrong idea about what her daughter will learn in that time.

True. There's a lot of other stuff which she'll need to work on in a thoughtful and imaginative manner (along with the obvious: bringing her DD's reading up to end of Reception level). She can do most of it, but only if she really understands what's needed.

Just a small thing - Year R (reception) isn't part of key stage 1. It's Early Years Foundation Stage.

try from there whether they will let her start at Easter

The school has no choice. If the OP wants to defer entry until Easter the school has to comply.

Depends on the school. My sons is straight to full days

No it does not depend on the school, although some like to behave as if it does. If the OP wants her child to attend Reception part time the school has to comply.

Although I know you have the right to insist on part time, or defer, my DDs' school would have been extremely huffy about it, and gone on and on about the disruption to the school and DD and the teacher.

I am absolutely not saying this is right, or that schools should behave like this, but you would have to be quite a ballsy parent to insist on picking up your DC every day at lunchtime for months on end, when the 59 other kids in the two Reception classes were all staying til 3pm. I think (hope?!) some schools would have much less attitude though.

The vast majority of good London schools will be full anyway.
Concentrate on getting a good place for your 6 year old. Its unlikely that you'll have a place for both anyway initially at the same school, so keep your youngest out until a place comes up for her too. You may find this takes weeks, it may be months and you can just "home educate" anyway for this period.

you'll probably need to take the reception place for your 4 year old as soon as it comes up though, or another may not come up for ages and you may be left taking your girls to different schools.

As she is summer born you can ask to defer reception until the following year when she is five. In some areas such as Liverpool it's an automatic right , most areas you have to fight for it.

Ofc if you can find a school that will help you get round that, then there's no reason to assume it will cause long-term problems. But certainly in the mainstream UK system (rather than international schools, or maybe some private schools) it would be an unusual choice, so you would be going out on a limb a bit.

Most children in Britain can attend half day nursery age 3-4. Very few defer starting reception at 4. The most likely think if you defer us that she will have to start year 1 at 5.

A niggle of mine, but both of these posts are describing the English system, not the 'UK' or the 'British' system. Up here in Scotland our children can start school at 4.5 at the earliest and deferrals are very common so many children can be nearer 6 before they start.

I think the skills learns in Reception are very valuable and missing Reception and going in to Y1 age 5 would put her at a big disadvantage IMHO.

I don't know much bat the intricacies of summer borns delaying starting until age 5 and going into Reception, but I think it will be difficult! I agree there isn't much flexibility in the English system and finding 2 school places in somewhere as oversubscribed as London coming from abroad will be very challenging anyway. I would not make life harder by trying to defer at all.

I'd say as well that if you are going to live in a popular area of London then finding any school place can be very difficult and you may need to choose a property to rent based on the distance from the school you want as published in the LA guidance.

I meant that my son's school was going full time from start. I know others that do part time at first.
I do this all this is mute until she finds a school though as I know in lots of places schools were very oversubscribed for reception this year.

OP, if you are happy to share what area (or even just which Local Authority) you'll be moving to then we might be able to help more with specifics (unless you've already got your distance from door and application priorities sorted out?).

I meant that my son's school was going full time from start. I know others that do part time at first

Your son's school also does part time at first if that is what the child's parents want. It has no choice. All state-funded schools are required to comply with the Admissions Code. The Code is clear that parents of any child that has not yet reached compulsory school age can choose that their child attends part time and the school must comply with the parents' wishes.

I am not American, but from the country that school starts later than UK.
Reception is not really like school anyway, and doesn't she get lonely if she doesn't have any similar aged children to play with?

It does seem young but reception is really not like school. They do a little bit of letters (phonics) and counting and introduction of basic concepts but it's not like they are expected to produce anything resembling "work", it's mostly finger paints and blocks and running around outside. The school I had DS signed up for (we moved country) was completely free play in reception with a few bits where they integrated with the rest of the school in a very safe, controlled way for them, so that it wasn't a big shock when they started year 1. They even had their own fenced-off area of the playground.

It might be she can do half days to start as she's a summer birthday. I remember when I started school lots of children did half days for the first term.

I was also a June-born four year old school starter 25 years ago BTW but did very well and left school with good grades :) I struggled socially, admittedly, but actually, I think that teaching staff are much more clued up about this kind of thing these days and more on the ball than they were in my day.

If you did want to home educate for a year that is perfectly legal, but as others have said, you might then struggle to find a place in the school that you want, you might just have to take wherever a space comes up. And the other children will already have formed friendship groups which might be difficult for her. Plus it might be confusing that she doesn't have the grounding in how to stand in line, be quiet when expected, etc. However, as you have the move and address issue, if you can't find a place initially it might just work out better to keep her at home until you've found a school place as others have said. I will let people advise on London school choosing because TBH it sounds like a bit of a minefield, and totally different to anywhere else in the country. The only thing I will say is that OFSTED results are not the be all and end all. Visit schools and see what they are like. Speak to the headteacher and the class teachers and see how the teachers interact with the students. (And marvel at the way school classrooms smell identical wherever in the world you seem to be, which is wonderfully evocative.)

And yes I'm talking England/Wales. Since OP has stated she is in London this is what would be relevant anyway.