Deferring summer borns- your experiences please.

[JoeGargery]

Hello
I have had approval to defer my summer born almost 4 year old such that he starts reception at 5 and one month.
Those who have done this, have you found any downsides?
FWIW he’s very independent and bright. I don’t doubt he’ll cope. I’m just struggling to see any advantage to starting school so young if he can start later.
I’ve been told he can continue in the adopted year group throughout school and can have funding to stay in nursery another year.
WWYD?

‘But doesn’t mean an extra year of play might not have been better’

You know reception is play based don’t you?

I am all for deferment where children are genuinely not ready but if you actually think he’ll cope you’re doing him a disservice.

You also need to prepare yourself for the potential of some really terrible behaviour if he outgrows nursery - both my kids went a bit wild from about 4.5 - they were bursting at the seams for more and it came out as aggression, tantrumming and misery.

I have a boy who will be 4 on 31st Aug, I thought about deferring but he is so ready to go to school and getting fed up in his nursery setting. I’m sure what ever we do for them they will adapt and thrive

My DD has just turned 5 and will be starting reception in September. There was no way she was ready for school this year, and no way she would be ready for Yr1 work this year - the big leap between reception and Yr1 is often where the younger children start to struggle.

As for being bored, the idea that a 4yo would be bored in a well run play based early years setting with children only a few weeks younger to play with seems ludicrous to me. Many countries don't start formal education until 6 or 7. Perhaps these nurseries aren't very stimulating?

Fwiw I was the youngest in my year group (moved up a year) and hated it. I struggled even more when all the girls at secondary were getting into boys and partying and I was miles away from that. My good friend was the oldest in the year, she's a year and 3 weeks older than me. She happily states that she loved it and was delighted her DC1 was an autumn born.

One more point - in Northern Ireland, the cut off for school admissions is the end of June, so the very youngest children are 4.2 and the very oldest are 5.2. They don't seem to have any issues staying at nursery until 5 or at 6th form until they are 18. My deferred DD is only starting school at the time she would have if I still lived in NI.

@CallMeCarolDanvers yes the one setting my DC1 was at wasn’t the best for the older group. To be honest the behaviour calmed right down when they started them all (it was a group of boys who were all friends causing trouble) on reading books alongside the phonics they were already delivering but it shouldn’t have been up to me to suggest ways of stretching them!

DS2’s nursery has been exceptional all the way through and actually started the stretch for him very quickly once the acting up started! In a way his nursery is too good as they have a real focus on school readiness, he’ll start in September at 4 years 4 months but has been school ready since Christmas.

So maybe some of these nurserys are not that effective at getting children ready for a year of play based reception?

I had a child in my year at school that had been kept back a year. He got bullied very badly and called a thicko as everyone said he wasnt clever enough to be with his actual age. For this reason I would never hold back a year.

Always defer if you possibly can. The older the better. There may not be a huge difference in primary school but it can be one quite stark in secondary. Defer.

Held back a year isn't the same as deferring for the sake of a few months.

Really difficult. Dts were late August born and 9 weeks prem. in the end we didn't defer them as they seemed ready.

They really struggled in reception not so much academically but physically. Most days they fell asleep during carpet time. They also struggled with writing, their grip wasn't great and again they got tired very quickly.

They are now coming to the end y3 and this year they have really flown, it's all just fallen into place.

If we were to do it again I really don't know what I would do!

I wouldn’t do it in a million years. I know several teenagers who in are in the year below and they are all having problems because the gap between them and their classmates has widened as puberty begins. They can’t be in the same sports teams as their friends because they are too old. It seems like a clever idea when they are little but I have seen it fail further along the line. The fact is they all catch up academically in the end anyway.

What happens if he were to start at 4 and then didn't get on? Could you keep him back?

I am September born and my birthday was the day before the cut off. So I started school the day after my 4th birthday. By the end of the school year it was apparent that I wasn't emotionally or educationally ready for year 1 so was kept back. I stayed back for the whole of my education. Aside from being a bit sad that my friends had moved up and I hadn't, it was for the best for me.

I would consider starting him and then seeing how he goes personally.

I'm considering this for summerborn DS, who has just turned 3yo and should start in Sept 2020. No SEN or development delays and he's bright BUT he's not as good at self-care or following instructions as other children his age - I'm worried he'll be labelled a naughty or disruptive child when actually he's just more immature. I'm concerned about the jump to Y1 and about how he'll cope with SATs and GCSEs - I don't see why giving him an extra year of growth and maturity to deal with these things could possibly be a bad thing. I think kids have to grow up too quickly here.

Tilly please think about how he will feel as a 13 towering over younger boys. He will be starting to get interested in girls when the other boys are playing with Lego. Don’t underestimate how damaging this can be for some teenagers.

@Mrscog, yes, I tried to make it clear it’s not reception I am concerned about, but what comes later.

Such a range of opinions. But so far those who have deferred haven’t had an issue except with different LA policies.

@TillyTheTiger I agree, you can’t get those years of childhood back and all too soon it’s exams and assessments.

I’m struggling to understand why being a month or two older than the September/October borns is seen as such a big issue when being 10/11 months younger than them isn’t!

We’ve had two children educated out of their year group in our small primary school.

One had Downs and the other was extremely premature and wasn’t talking at 4.

It worked for them in primary but the secondaries in our LA won’t accept a child into year 7 unless they are in their correct year group. So the child with Downs left us I Year 5 and I expect the other child will too.

“you know Reception is play based, don’t you?”

Not any more!! Yep, they do have free-flow play, but it’s mostly structured learning. DC2 is about to finish Reception and he is doing 2, 3, 5 and 10 times tables, reading fluently (a full hour of literacy a day) and doing extended writing.

He’s one of the eldest and quick to learn so has been fine. My April born DD found it really hard, probably more to do with personality than age.

Levels have raised SO much in the last few years. I despair. It is absolutely not a play year, even if it once was.

My DCs experiences of Reception have left me with the impression that there’s a heck of a lot of structured learning.

The schools we’ve been in have had an expectation that children leaving Reception can read quite fluently and produce large chunks of neat writing with phonetically plausible spellings.

Reception is less formal than Year 1, but I’m sceptical about claims that it’s play based.

OP, as a slightly different take on this: have you thought about keeping your DS in the 'right' year group, but just skipping Reception and sending him into Y1 next year instead? You mention that you have been given Nursery funding for a further year, so he would be in some form of schooling/childcare if that makes a difference to you.

Mine are all summer born, and I did this with my first (no particular reason, other than that I liked having him at home and wasn't in any hurry to send him to school. I also couldn't see any advantage at all, especially academically, to sending him to school at just four when he was learning so much at home). I tried to do it with the others, but they insisted on going to school over the course of Reception. I don't think any of them was disadvantaged by it.

And as an aside, why do we hardly ever hear negative concerns about September born DC based on their birthday?

You hardly ever hear any of this “won’t he be bored being with younger children”, “aren’t you worried about him starting puberty before his classmates” and so on asked about September born children.

Despite the fact that there’s a very small gap between a September born child and the youngest children in the year above.

These questions and concerns apply just as much to a September born child as they do to an August born one, and yet it’s incredibly rare to hear of September born children being moved up a school year.

@morepeasinapod yes, that’s what I was trying to say upthread but you were more eloquent!

@FamilyOfAliens that is depressing. Poor kids, having to skip a year.

@ElizabethJacketDeLaGuerre I don’t want him to miss a year of school and I’d have to apply for an in year place. He only goes three mornings a week to nursery at the moment, just to get ready for school. He’s thriving there and has made friends.

Why do we push our kids so early? Other countries don’t, and we aren’t doing better than everyone else.

I was thinking the same as a pp about whether children who were “held back” would be bullied later. And I can kind of see it when deferment was vanishingly rare, but in Scotland (where it has been commonplace for decades) no one bats an eyelid, so I suspect that by the time these summer borns reach secondary it may well be the same in England.

This is a fascinating thread. It just emphasises how much variability there is in children's maturity and development at any given age. IMO there should be much less rigidity in formal education anyway as development is so different between children.

A PP mentioned that they all end up in the same place at the end - actually there is a huge body of evidence that the summer borns underperform for their intellectual ability throughout their whole academic careers and do less well in life generally than those who are oldest in their years.

Regarding puberty, I really don't think this is an issue as there is such a great range of ages at which children reach puberty anyway.

This is the norm for Ireland too. They can start anywhere from 4-6yrs with the average being 5.5. And over here they don’t go to secondary school until they are at least 12 normally. Every child is different but I will say I have never heard of a parent regretting deferring a child , I have however heard of parents regretting sending them in too young. My dd started at 4.5 as she absolutely refused to go into Montessori again. She is academically great but I fear emotionally she could be a bit better. She is the second youngest in her class. My DS will be 5 starting.

Rumboogie

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/education-44155068

This appear to contradict what you say in your post.