Summer Born Deferred Children Excluded From Team Sports

[David88]

We are currently looking at deferring our daughter as she is a summer born child. She was born in late August putting her just days older than the year group more suited to her educational and emotional needs. Whilst this is being supported we are being told she will be “excluded from all team sports throughout her life” by admissions. Despite her being just 11 days older than the September year group cut off, the ‘U8’, ‘U9’ etc code will apparently exclude her from taking part in all team sports away from school or when her school plays another etc. Does anyone have experience on what pathways there are to allow her to be included with her peers. I understand the FA have a system for football but after speaking to the local council who don’t offer any guidance or help on the subject there seems to be no avenues on this subject. Would anyone have any advice please?

Why wouldn’t you ?

with a late august birthday...very few classmates might be around, school not started yet so you don't know who is in the class, often august birthdays are a bit lonely anyway.
and literally within days there will be children with september birthdays having the exact same birthday as your child.
as for parents well maybe when the little one comes in first for the school cross country race you might hear "you know he's a year older than the rest" when in fact he's maybe 2 weeks older.

Are young children actually aware of the boundary between one school year and the next anyway? And by the time they are, it will just be their friend, not someone who is "old".

My experience of having 3 dc is yes, they are aware.

Age and birthdays are very important at that age. After all there's 25% of difference between being 4 and 5 😀
My dc were always aware who was the oldest in the class/year; who shared birthdays, whose birthday was first out of a group etc

She likely would be playing with the year above if she wanted to play.
why defer though?
As an August baby myself I’m glad my parents didn’t do that to me.
just start the kid in the spring term instead of September, or do part time until they get used to it.

Well said!

Some sports allow you to apply for dispensation. Football is one. Many sports are based on year of birth, with the 31st December being the cut-off - certainly true for hockey (and where school year is use in hockey, there is typically some flexibility). Again, kids cricket is typically a bit flexible too. In school, children can normally plate it their adopted cohort.

This is often spouted as a reason not to delay entry. While it can be an issue, none of the sunmerborn children I know who I have been delayed have been massively affected, and many would probably be okay playing in the year above for out-of-school teams if they had to.

When it comes to choosing academic year group, make your decision based entirely on how ready you think your child is for school. We chose to delay our son and it was absolutely the best decision for him. A lot of people who have had negative experiences tend to have older summer-burns in my experience, but there may well be late August kids who are absolutely ready for school at just turned 4.

Deferring reception until age 5 is an amazing idea and I’m so glad it’s becoming more common

Don’t understand, doesn’t it just mean she will need to compete with her actual age group, not with all the kids a year younger than herself?

Yup, that’s exactly what it means.

which doesn’t work for the parents who want to get an advantage for their own kids by using other peoples children.

No one defers in order for their child to compete. Parents defer because they care about their individual children and ultimately its better to start primary school just turned 5 rather than just turned 4