Summerborn reception

[Userflower]

I just wanted to share some good news, my friends child started reception this week (deferred summerborn so is already age 5). There are 7 summerborn children deferred in her class. There are no children born in July or August 2021, as they’ve all deferred to start next year!
Times are changing!!

I don't think we can conclude yet that it is on average better for a summer born to defer.
It's not been a "right" for long enough to have those children going through school and university and into jobs.
The children that were deferred before that were normally deferred for a specific reason, and not in numbers. So not enough to make meaningful statistics.
It's certainly possible that it will be found that on average it doesn't help, although it may help certain children.
I'd have deferred ds if it had been an option. At infant level it would have felt obvious. He's now left school and I can tell you it would not have been the best decision for him. I t would have been the right decision through infant, mixture in juniors and wrong at secondary.

And it's also possible that July and August there would have been no children in that form anyway, rather than it being a decision. On average, for a class of 30, there would be 2.5 a month, so 5 children over those two months. That's not actually that many.
And my dc's infant classes haven't been balanced in terms of through the year.
Dd1's (across two classes, so 60 entrance) had 5 children born between beginning of January and end of April - and I think they were all March. So there were no January and February birthdays.
Dd2's had a shortage of summer term birthdays and a huge number of September and October birthdays.
Ds' year was summer dominated slightly, but early summer, so as a summer baby he was I think 3rd youngest in his form (5th in the year I think) - but he was early June, so you'd have expected more younger than him.

I think you’re focusing on the wrong thing here. There’s not much data on deferrals but decades worth of data showing that the older you are when you start school, the better the outcomes.

Precisely. We weren’t clued up with DC1 and he’s a late spring birthday. I remember seeing him alongside my friend‘s baby when he was 2 months old and friend baby was a walking babbling 10 month old and friend commented they’d be in same school year - blew my mind. So we planned DC2 for autumn. She’s just started school at almost 5 and is a million miles ahead of where DC1 was when he started.

We are planning DC3 but now I’m older don’t feel I have the luxury of time to skip months out, so if we end up a summer born this time we will just defer without question.

That just moves the accepted cut-off date. It means that next year any August-born 4-year-old joining Reception could be over a year younger than the oldest in the class. Doesn’t sound like a good idea to me, except in exceptional circumstances.

They can defer also

Do you not see where this leads?

There’s not much data on deferrals

So it's not yet possible to say how deferral (for other than specific, individual reasons) impacts children and yp throughout their education, compared with how being the youngest impacts them.

My friend has 5 children, all of whom are born between September and November which she specifically aimed for in order to avoid this issue.

When me and DH were TTC our second baby we made the stupid mistake of assuming that because I fell pregnant on our first month of trying for our first child, the same would happen the next time round too! So we started TTC in Dec/Jan time so we'd have a nice September baby but sadly it didn't work out that way and it took 11 cycles of trying before I eventually got a positive pregnancy test!

I found out I was pregnant at the start of December and I was obviously elated after we'd been trying for so long, as was my husband.....but after lots of excited shouts and cuddles etc he looked at me and said, "Oh no, that means it's going to be an August baby doesn't it?" 😂😂

It was obviously said in jest but we always knew from the start that we would defer our son's school start date.

What do you mean? Data on academic outcomes is already there. What other impacts might there be?

if for example all July and August defer then the youngest will be June babies. They will have been 4 for a couple of months before school, not just turned like an end of August child

Some children are ready for school at just 4 and some parents will want them to start as soon as possible. There could be a big difference in size and maturity between the 'just 4' child and the over 5 child, making it very difficult for the YR teacher to cater for their different levels of development.

If a child makes a deferred start, do they ever move out of that cohort and 'catch up'? Will they have to miss a year in KS2, or will their secondary school agree to keep them in the 'wrong' year, starting Y7 at age 12?

What you’re describing is completely normal in lots of other countries - in Ireland for example. More parental choice is a good thing.

And no, children who are deferred remain deferred for the entirety of their schooling. Being older in your cohort remains a positive all the way through (when doing GCSEs, when first exposed to alcohol, when learning to drive etc etc etc).

It isn't always a positive in sport - for the older child who e.g. can’t play in an 'under 11s' team or for the other children in the class who have to compete against children older, bigger and stronger, and feel it’s unfair.

I don’t understand what difference it makes to alcohol, learning to drive etc. as they are age-related anyway.

Exactly! My end of August baby started last year and was so ready for it. She was due in the sept and im so glad now she came early. She'd have been bored in preschool for another year. I made an informed choice and would do the same again.

Same with mine. Aug 28th (she was due late sept), and started reception a week after her 4th birthday. She didn’t go to any sort of nursery setting, she was at home with me until reception.

I looked at her walking into year one the other day and thought how bored she would have been if she was just starting reception now. She’s absolutely flying academically and socially.

You can’t say one choice is better than the other, it all depends on the child (and she’s the youngest of 4, eldest is in his 20s, so I was very much looking forward to her going!)

I am uni educated. I sent my July born child to school at 4. She's just started high school after achieving 116, 119 and 120 in her SATs. I must be a terrible mother.

I don’t understand what difference it makes to alcohol, learning to drive etc. as they are age-related anyway

@Jiddles no teen wants to be the last to reach age-related milestones. And with things like drinking and sexual experience which should be linked to chronological age but are really just linked to what your peers are doing, I would rather my kids were at the older end than the younger.

It's good it's an option being used by parents who wish to use it. My youngest will start school 6 weeks after turning 4 and I know she'll be fine and will love it. It's all depends on the child.

Data on academic outcomes is already there.

So what is the data for academic outcomes at 18 for children who were deferred? (other than deferment for specific needs such as premature birth)

What other impacts might there be?

Social - On this thread or the other current thread about August born children, a secondary teacher says that the deferred children she encounters do not like that they have been deferred and try to hide the fact from their classmates. Plus the issue of not being able to play sport with their adopted year.

Self esteem - Children/yp wanting to know why they were deferred, when other summer-borns they know were not.

Funding - I saw this asked on another thread, but don't think it was answered. YP are entitled to three years of education aged 16-19, allowing them to retake a year. How does this work when the student is already 19 when s/he finishes the second year of post 16 education and would be turning 20 during the course of a third year?

Data on academic outcomes is based on age - it shows that older children do better. In Northern Ireland summer borns are the oldest children so all of this is readily available.

I have never met a single primary age child who doesn’t want to be the oldest in any given situation.

Deferred children are a matter of weeks older than the oldest in the “correct” year and it’s becoming increasingly common. It’s easy to explain to a child that you made a decision in their best interests, like hundreds of other parenting choices we explain to our children.

I was asking specifically about data relating to children who have been deferred.

I have never met a single primary age child who doesn’t want to be the oldest in any given situation.

The teacher was commenting on secondary aged children.

It’s easy to explain to a child that you made a decision in their best interests,

And when they are no longer children and are too old to be fobbed off with that explanation? 'But why did you think it was in my best interests?'

@HonoriaBulstrode I’m not sure if you’re being deliberately obtuse here - if what is being measured is academic outcomes then that data already exists and it shows that the oldest children in any given academic year are statistically likely to perform the best, and it tracks closely by month so that being born in September gives you an edge over October and October over November and so on. In NI the oldest children are born in July so, as I said, the data is there and it shows the same pattern except that there, it’s the July borns who gain the most advantage.

In Ireland kids can start any time between 4 and 6 and there is no angst at all between kids of any age, whether primary or secondary, about when they started as the range is just the norm. You seem to be projecting some kind of negativity around it as if the kids would feel they were “held back”, but there is no reason why that would automatically be the case.

And in any event, I make decisions for in my children’s best interests all the time that they may not like very much (eg I don’t let them eat sweets and watch tv all day) but that’s just part of life and a risk I would certainly take if I had a July/August born child.

As a mum who deferred my August born son back in 2017 when the law initially was introduced. I can hand on heart say that it’s been one of the best decisions I’ve ever made! He’s now in year 6 and he’s doing fantastically both academically and socially.
it has given him such confidence, that perhaps he wouldn’t have had, had he now been the youngest in year 7. Sencondaty school transition is a ball ache now though 🙄😬

Lots of people don't have the privilege of "planning" their child for a particular month!

You maybe haven’t looked at the whole picture. A student in England can only be funded up to the year in which they turn 19. It is fairly common for students to repeat year 12, maybe they chose the wrong A levels or changed their mind about which course to take. It gives them a safety net. You have now ruled that opportunity out, because your child has already gone back a year. Or if they change schools because they have had problems - going back a year can help them reset.