Can daughter skip a year ahead?

[hkmama88]

Hello - we are moving from Hong Kong to the UK (Croydon) next month. My daughter's birthday is Sep 18 2011 which means she would technically be in Year 1 in the UK, but in HK her school has a Dec 31 cutoff, which means here she is in Year 2, has been in school since she was 2 and is already reading and writing like her other Year 2 classmates. She isn't gifted, just working at the standards of her current situation/school.

We are concerned that she will be bored going back to what looks like mostly phonics and foundation for reading work in Year 1 and that will make the transition from HK to UK even harder for her. Socially, she is mature, loves school and is fine being the youngest in class (she is one of the youngest now). Basically we know that Year 2 is the right fit for her. Is there any hope for State schools agreeing to put her ahead? I've asked them about the best way to make our case but they haven't responded.

Has anyone been in this situation?

Any help/advice appreciated! Thank you!

Technically it's possible, but in real terms it very rarely happens in the UK. The UK state school system is generally very inflexible around these things.

All you can do is ask the Head of the school, and you would also need to make sure it wouldn't cause issues in the transition from year 6 to 7 - you may find secondaries won't take her until her proper year, so she would be stuck repeating year 6.

Wow - thank you all for the quick feedback! It sounds like there is a great deal of potential variety in terms of where the Year 1 kids will be in their academics and that children who are ahead have opportunities to work at a faster pace. Please let me know if that has not been your experience. Our concern is only for DD's boredom as she is currently thriving in a challenging environment and coming from a mixed age system, we have seen first-hand how being with older children pushes children to succeed.

Since some were speculating - DD was born in HK and that is the only educational system she has been in - first in an accredited Montessori which is mixed age classrooms and now in IB primary years program - it is thus her 3rd year of full-day school. She is a native English speaker and I would say above avg intelligence, just not crazy genius level. Our kids are unlikely to do secondary in the UK as we will move again (neither of us are English) - we are sending them to state school. We will try and get clear answers from the schools about how children of different abilities are treated and make our decision from there - your responses have been super helpful in that regard!

Since some of you cited being oldest as an advantage - if you haven't seen the alternate viewpoint on the youngest/oldest in a classroom - here is an article that lays it out - being the youngest confers grit/ability to tough it out, so youngest children in classes actually do better in the long-run. www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/youngest-kid-smartest-kid

If she is currently year 2 in an IB school she really won't suffer going into year 1 in UK. The system is very differently focussed and there will be gaps in her learning which this transition will allow her to make up.

OP, my DS went year 1 IB to year 1 English in the January of year 1. He was absolutely fine and not in any way bored. Advantage is because the year band was the same wasn't even obvious to him he moved down (although he did pick up that DD was suddenly only one year below not two!)

What education system do you plan your DD to be in long term? If she might need to get pushed up a year later that would be a reason to insist now.

Which Croydon school are you thinking of?

Have you looked at the private sector, if you are in a position to, as the class sizes are much smaller so they will be able to adjust to her level better so she is less likely to be bored.

The focus of that article is on red shirting and why it's not a good idea so not really the same thing.

@billybagpuss - only looking at State for primary - 3 kids in school.

@lizs - thank you, that is a good point

@Whyamistillawake - hi, you mean went from Y2 IB to Y1 UK (that is our situation)? Good to hear it was so smooth! Yes, also have that the younger sister is 23 months younger, they have been 2 years apart in school until now and will switch to being 1 year apart. Not sure how that will go down - could be a non-issue or could make DD upset as she's paying attention to these types of things now. We hope secondary will be back to IB or perhaps will be US system (where I am from), but unlikely to be UK.

@IceMagic - Looking at Ridgeway Primary as our top choice - if you have any other suggestions, please let me know. We prefer non-traditional, nurturing, less homework, more emphasis on character and creativity.

@MyOtherProfile the first few paragraphs discuss redshirting but all the research cited and the rest of the article just focus on the relative performance of the youngest and oldest within classes as they follow them through life. "Few researchers would dispute that, in the immediate term, being relatively bigger, quicker, smarter, and stronger is a good thing. Repeatedly, the studies have found exactly that—older kindergarten students perform better on tests, receive better teacher evaluations, and do better socially. But then, something happens: after that early boost, their performance takes a nosedive. By the time they get to eighth grade, any disparity has largely evened out—and, by college, younger students repeatedly outperform older ones in any given year."

My sister and father both skipped a grade, and it never was a problem. I wish I had been skipped in primary. . Chikdren in the top 5-10% of ability should skip a primary year routinely. Differentiation works poorly in practice.

One thing to think about it sport. I have a DC in the "wrong"year and it's a problem as any sports outside of school go on actual birthdates not school year. Means mine is not in with his mates and it's a problem.

One thing to think about it sport. I have a DC in the "wrong"year and it's a problem as any sports outside of school go on actual birthdates not school year. Means mine is not in with his mates and it's a problem.

You do realise you won't have free choice of the local schools? Class sizes until year 3 are limited to 30 maximum and popular schools may be at capacity already. It will very much depend where has spaces when you arrive possibly not at the same school for both.

Our IB had pre-school 3, pre-school 4 and pre-school 5 so year 1 was equivalent of English year 2, (similar to the US grading).

I did read the article OP. What I was pointing out is the writer is coming at it from a different angle from you because they had actively wanted to keep a child down not push them up.

The other issue with the article is how selective it is. There is lots of research to show that olser children in a year do better right through even university. Only last week I read a recent article from the uni of Toronto saying just that. You can always find a piece of research to back you up if you're a journo and want to make a point.

The OP's case - an average kid, just outside the age range who's covered everything in the YR1 curriculum because she's been in YR1 for a year would be a good candidate for continuing moving in the year she's currently in.

It's quite a different situation to moving people up because they are gifted, where it doesn't do anything to address differentiation, just forces them to work slightly harder for a short time to address the missed learning, and then leaves them with the same need for differentiaion anyway, and unless you skip R or YR1, even then the slightly harder won't apply as most will have already covered more than a year ahead.

And obviously completely different to redshirting.

My ds was reading/writing and doing all 4 operations in maths before starting school at 4, at local state.
School managed to cater for him up to the certain point. He wasn't bored in KS1.
There are varying abilities of children in the class, and school are meant to differentiate. You need to speak with the school how they deal with children who are academically ahead, and there maybe a possibility that there's children more ahead than your dd in yr1.
But then, state school's budged is limited, so it maybe better to aim at private if you can, if your dc is really ahead of other peers.

All of the evidence points to older in year doing better - you can teach her the grit and deuce yourself

It’ll be enough of a challenge moving countries and friends etc - keep it easy for her on the schooling.

Lots of children do monestorri or a couple of nursery years here too.

I am very academic and assumed that my bright child would be best if pushed and thought he should be moved up a year. But I have been educated! Kids need to be kids, to play with their peers, to be allowed to be daft. My DS is still really into imaginative play and would stand out as babyish if he were in a class of his academic peers, rather than his social peers. If your child is going to be a brain surgeon Nobel prize winner then they will get there whether advanced or not but will handle it better if socially rounded.

I'm being a bit slow - but how out of kilter will she be with the year group above in terms of age.

My children have mainly been in split years groups so
YR/Y1, y1/y2, y3/y4 and y5/y6

This has always been fine academically wherever they sit in the year group.

It has always worked really badly socially when they are at the extreme end of the age gap - so eg last year my son had just turned 9 and was working with kids turning 11 and they were in totally different places socially.

It can be hard being the youngest or oldest of year group that covers a year, but if its starts being much longer it can be very hard/
Things like growing out of cbeebies, or still being really into cbeebies, still being at a stage when imaginative play is important v just coming out of it, everyone having a mobile phone etc.

Just a bit of anecdotal reassurance; in my child's school they often mix year groups in order to deal with large class sizes. My dd is one of the youngest in her class and last year ended up being in a mixed class with the year below (year 1 as it happens!). Dd sounds similar to yours - not gifted but above average academically. The teacher told me she had spoken to the head about possibly moving her into the older class because she was concerned herself about how a bright kid would manage in a year below them. In the end they worked out a plan to differentiate the work and last year was a great school year for dd. They managed to stretch her academically but best of all, being the oldest in a class was great for her confidence. It also seemed to bring out a maturity in her and a nice nurturing side as she liked looking out for the younger ones. I'd say give your dd a chance in year 1, address problems if and when they come up as teachers will be more inclined to deal with real issues rather than hypothetical ones.

I think your problem would be moving in year and not having a school to deal with until you had a place in year 1.

Croydon may be able to provide you with all the schools who have a place in the correct year for your daughter. You would apply for those, and to any full up schools you fancied joining the waiting list for. So you get accepted in a school for year one, it's unlikely they would have a year 2 place too.

I don't think a state school would want any child slotting in out of year in year 2. She might adversely affect their SAT results!

In my child's primary class there is a huge range of abilities and they all seem to rub along well. Teachers are good at sorting the work out and the senior management team would hopefully make sure children were doing their best.

Don't make problems for yourself, find a school that will take her and go from there. You might find it's not a school the middle classes go for but maybe a school that's more used to children dropping in and out of role.

Good luck with the move

I am very academic and assumed that my bright child would be best if pushed and thought he should be moved up a year. But I have been educated! Kids need to be kids, to play with their peers, to be allowed to be daft.
@athawres I think I love you!

Thanks everyone for your comments! Esp @auntlydia for sharing your experience. It seems unlikely we're going to be able to fight the cutoff date so will, as you said, deal with it if/when problems come up.

hi hkmama, apart from the practicalities that have been discussed etc, thanks for the link to that article which was interesting.

However I find it confuses/mixes up a lot of things (redshirting; countries where traditionally parents have had a lot of choice in school entry year and it is generally a 'stages not ages' thing rather than with competitive advantage in mind; mixed age year groups; skipping ahead/being held back a year) and doesn't really provide evidence for anything at all; at the end of the day it reads like (and this is very common) someone is trying to make a point and gathers evidence to shore it up; but because there is very little evidence (if any), they use even vaguely related things too, to create an impression of having many sources pointing in the same direction.

The data for results by age (Summer/Autumn born) in the UK is very clear; in the early years of school, summer born children are massively less likely to meet standards than autumn born children. Summer born girls compared to Autumn born girls have similar differences in the probability of meeting expectations as summer born boys compared to autumn born boys, though for boys the likelihood is overall lower than for girls. The difference does reduce over time but is still huge at end of Y2 and noticeable at university entry stage. In my opinion this is because the expectations/standards, but also teaching and learning styles, are adapted to the average abilities/developmental stage of the older half of the cohort. Which means that, on average, the younger children will always be struggling to keep up. It's not about being oldest/youngest (someone has got to be the youngest) but rather about (un)realistic age related expectations.

The situation in the UK cannot really be compared to data from any other countries, so the evidence from that article really is quite meaningless for you. When standards are set more towards the younger end of the age cohort, being young in year will have different effects. In mixed-age groups, being young in year will have different effects. Being young in year is not really comparable to being accelerated anyway. When traditionally there is a lot of choice into which cohort a child can go, as in some of the studies cited in that article, then there is likely to be a strong element of self-selection; children that are not 'ready' yet are more likely to be held back compared to same-age children that are, and it is probable that the same reason for them not having been ready yet will explain, in part, their weaker results later on compared to those children that WERE ready; rather than the fact that they were held back. Also most experiences of changing cohorts that you will hear will be from people educated in places/times where changing cohorts is/was common; and thus not really applicable to your situation as it is so very rare in England.

Now this does not really affect you as it is averages and other people's experiences and data from different systems, and you're concerned with your specific situation and indeed it is possible that your daughter might comfortably meet expectations in the year ahead, and be well adapted socially.

But as people have pointed out it is unlikely to be possible anyway. So what I would suggest, also in light of your latest post regarding more 'alternative' provision, is to keep a look out for schools that have mixed-age groups; here you would get the benefits you associate with that without having to go 'out-of-year'. Often these will be small schools, or schools with an intake that is not a multiple of 30. Many people dislike this but like you, I personally do see benefits from mixed-age classes and there is no reason not to choose those schools - many parents do!

But also, you mention that We prefer non-traditional, nurturing, less homework, more emphasis on character and creativity. Now you are much more likely to find this, at any school, in Y1 than in Y2; often people who consider moving their child up a school year do so because they are seeking more formal learning and 'pushing' (often associated with Y2) rather than the more relaxed learning often found in Y1. From this perspective you should be looking at keeping your child back rather than accelerating her! There are of course some rare schools that resist the 'results' pressure and manage to focus on creativity and nurture, but they are hard to find (at least in our region) and I'm jealous of anyone who is lucky enough to have their kids at one.

I would not put your daughter a year ahead personally. We’re in exactly the same situation as you. DS has end of year birthday, he finished y3 in Hk and started y3 again in uk in Sept. He fit right into his new school, made friends quickly and is enjoying being one of the eldest. He did say work is easy but he’s loving being the top of the class. My DD (YR) is struggling more and is still finding her feet in her class. I think you shud focus more on he social aspect of school life and allow her to settle into her new environment.