Deferring summer born children

[SB2017]

Hi,
Just looking for some advice about whether to defer my son or not for primary school. He was born 26th August but I’m not doing this because of his age. He has had hearing issues since he was born and speech and language problems. I don’t think he is ready for school yet as he is behind esp compared to his nursery classmates. I saw a school today and the headteacher made me feel awful as she was strongly opinionated against deferring and made me feel like it was the worst thing in the world just considering it. Has anyone done it?

Deferred my summerborn after lots of research and agonising, happy to discuss - DM me.

My son had severe glue ear and had grommets fitted in June. His hearing is better and he has hearing tests coming up but his speech and language have been affects a lot because of it. We read with him everyday to help and he does try.
It’s hard to make a judgement 10months before school as in 6 months he may be absolutely fine but the council want applications in by January.

Lots of people have positive experiences of school deferral (ie adopting a new cohort and continuing in it), but no one has an example of a negative experience (aside from ‘jumping’ straight into Y1 with birth cohort).

So why do LAs and schools make it so hard? No one cares about people doing gap years before uni or dropping down a year if transferring in from a foreign country.

I’ve done all the applications now and applied for school and sent the deferral forms. Just now onto the waiting game to see if it’s successful. I’m glad the paperwork is in and I can concentrate on helping his speech and have baby number 2

Well done OP (those forms are a nightmare!) and good luck!