is it possible to do 1.5 years of reception?

[punjama]

our DD was born just after september started so missed the cut off for primary school. as such she is now doing a second year or nursery. all the other kids are either 2 or barely 3 (like she was last year).

another friend told that she heard that "apparently" you can apply for mid year reception place at a primary school sometime in November (perhaps diff. date for diff councils), join mid year, then do a full year of reception the next year as scheduled.

is this really possible? were based in croydon and i tried having a look on the website but couldnt find anything. when i tried to go in year admission link it said "kids born 1st sep 18-31st aug 19 apply normal process other link"

would love to hear if anyone has had any experience about this.

many thanks!

presumably this depends on schools having place as well. would we need to contact them directly or again go through council application process if there is one?
many thanks

I'm a Reception teacher and I've never heard of this. But maybe it is different in different areas. I think you may have to ask the council/LEA. Good luck!

I've never heard of this. I'd assume there would be some issue around funding if they tried it.

Could it be that a child was put into a mixed nursery /reception class and someone has got the wrong end of the stick?

You could try asking your local schools /LA 🤷🏻

When you say nursery, is it a preschool type? Some preschools split out the two years so your dd would only be with 3 and 4 year olds - maybe you can see if there is one in your area?

Otherwise, I wouldn't worry about it, I think we start school too early in this country so I definitely wouldn't be starting earlier.

Years ago, reception classes had different intakes, at the start of each term. As a summer born I started after Easter, for just the summer term.

IMO, the old children got an additional benefit of two more terms of reception as well as the age advantage.

DC1 is a September baby, and they had the ‘extra’ year in a private nursery pre-school, but would have happily have been in school the year before.

Not in state school in the U.K.. parents are fighting to keep them down a year in fact! She'll be really well prepared for school - buy some phonics reading books and first writing (tracing letter pad) to give her a boost maybe. One of mine was reading fluently before starting school

It works like that in some school nurseries, so they take most children in Sept and then some who have just turned 3 in Jan, but I've never heard of it in Reception.

It may happen in some places but I doubt it is an option somewhere like Croydon which has high numbers needing school places.

If you join mid year you just move to yr1 with the rest in september. V rare to stay in same year in uk system .

Apart from the logistics of securing a place I think it could be problematic as they will be working through their learning in a building blocks way starting with simple concepts and building on them. Eg first term learning simple phonics sounds and moving on to digraphs etc, and the same with maths.
So if you start your child mid way through the year they will have missed all of that foundation which will be hard for them to then understand.

In the way that she is referring to, no. (assuming you are in England or Wales, elsewhere I don't know!)

Some schools have on-site pre-schools that integrate a lot with reception, rather than being very standalone (especially if the school is small), but you can't apply for a reception place when she is under school age - she will start in reception as one of the oldest.

our DD was born just after september started so missed the cut off for primary school.
You’re on the favourable side of the cut off. Parents of children born before it sometimes choose to keep their DC back a year to get the benefit of another year like yours will have.

DD's school takes older preschool kids in Reception from the Spring term so it's definitely worth asking.

I was a Reception teacher and I don't think that is possible. I've certainly never heard of it.

I don't really agree that September born children are automatically better off just because they're oldest in the year. If they're bright they'll probably know their phonics and numbers before getting to Reception so academically they'll be bored. There's lots of other stuff to learn in Reception wrt social skills, routines etc. which might be enough to keep them going but it's not fun sitting through learning to count to 20 when you can count to 1000 and do sums already.

I think bright older children in the year need as much care taking with them as the really young kids in the year but support tends to understandably be focused towards levelling up the less able kids.

My school did that many years ago (more than 30) when there wasn't a school nursery. They were referred to as Rusing Fives but weren't really part of the main Reception class.

RISING Fives.

If you apply for a pre-school place in a nursery that is attached to a primary school, then the final year of the "early years" pre-school is very similar to reception in a lot of ways - some of them even have the kids wearing a "uniform" in the preschool (just a logo'd polo shirt, with any own-clothes below the waist). That would have an overall feel of being very similar to what you were hoping for.

As Reception places are allocated in April prior to the September start, you would need to apply for the place for starting Reception in September 2023, and then once that has been allocated find out if your child can join the school a term early - it would be a bad idea to do anything earlier than that, as there would be no guarantee that the child would get a place in the target eventual cohot.

hi all
thank you for your replies. definetly dont want her to start year 1 early. whilst i am british, we speak a diff. language at home primarily and DD is super small so would be good to have her get extra time growing / gaining confidence, our only concern was that all her peers at this nursery are now very young - concerned it might not be as fun / shed have less development opportunities vs when she was going there with the older kids! nursery is tiny so not connected to school / no multiple intakes.

thank you all

In a similar situation we moved to a nursery attached to the school he would attend (had older siblings), so he was at one playschool from nearly 3 to nearly 4 and then moved for the second year (nearly 4 to nearly 5). His age/ boredom wasn't the reason we moved him, but it did work well for him.

No this isn't a thing op sorry x

Worth looking at private schools which have a nursery if this is what you want. My 3.5 year old daughter (April birthday) has just started in the pre school at a private school, and they run it as an EYFS unit with reception too. Although she’s not in reception, she has access to the reception teacher and they’ve said children who are ready from the pre school will join reception for maths/phonics input. I think this is the closest you’ll get to what you’re describing. The nursery is no more expensive than any other private nursery and they don’t have to stay for school there.

It's not really possible, as children are allocated a unique number on entry which is linked to their year group, and the systems just wouldn't allow it. Plus, the school would not get any funding for the extra terms, both due to age and due to the fact that all funding is allocated based on numbers on roll in early October.

What - theoretically - could happen, if you could talk a headteacher into it, is registering your child for a Nursery place and then them working with the Reception class while being on roll in Nursery. In some (mostly small/rural schools) they're together anyway - probably not in Croydon. But I suspect you'd have to go a very long way to find a HT who would do that and provide convincing evidence that your child was able enough to cope.

Go with the flow. When they're doing their GCSEs, this really won't matter.

Your friend's story falls apart when she talks about applying in November. It is possible for a child to delay entry until later in the year provided they start no later than the start of term following their fifth birthday, but you still apply at the normal time. A child who joins Reception mid-year will still go into Y1 the next year.

I suspect your friend has confused two separate things - the fact that you can defer starting Reception until the start of term following the child's fifth birthday and the fact that summer born children may be allowed to start school when they are five, hence doing Reception a year later than other children.

As your child was born in September, you have the option of delaying her start until January, but she will go up to Y1 the following autumn. She will not to 1.5 years in Reception.