What age do you think children should start school?

[LucyLight]

I really strongly believe that the school starting age in this country is too young. My youngest will be starting school next September at 4 years and 2 weeks. Our primary belief systems are in development at this time and children are required to fit in with school learning styles and discipline when they are often just not develope enough to do this. This often leads children to think that they can't do things and I have seen this with my daughter's friends who are all summer birthdays. If you feel stongly about this please sign this petition to get the government to rethink school starting age in line with the Cambridge Review.

petitions.number10.gov.uk/Startat6/

Thank you!

Enkana,

There in lies the problem. Many teachers fail to make allowances for a child's true age. So, a summer born child is more likely to be statemented than an autumn child and autumn children are more likely to be put on a G&T program and be in the top sets. This feeds through to self-esteem, confidence and ultimately (in some cases) to a a total disillusionment with school.

Bright (or even average) autumn born children, allowed to coast along, may get a rude awakening at Uni - the first educational stage where summer borns out perform their winter born peers.

The fact that you felt your summer born dd needs to be educated alongside children 9 months older than her is due to other problems in our primary schools not a reason to hold on to an unfair system.

Have only read the first half of the thread for now so apologies if this has already been said.

I think there is an issue with the type of nurseries we have in the UK. Sadly many (not all before I get flamed) nursery staff are poorly-qualified, poorly paid and poorly motivated workers.

Other countries (not all again but some) see working in a nursery as a higher status job and the staff are often more akin to teachers anyway.

If I knew ds would be at a nursery with really well-qualified staff who would respond to his needs then yes I'd have considered another couple of years there rather than school but the way our system is now, no way!

And reception is really just like nursery anyway but with access to some fun stuff with the "big kids".

6 seems about right, I think.

We're in Scotland, and I have two winter-born children (ds1 November and ds2 January). Because of the option to defer (which is a great thing abut the Scottish system) though, I could , in theory defer ds1 and not ds2, and then both of them would be in the same class, which I find a little worrying - there is 14 months between them, and developmentally, the difference is enormous at this age. They haven't started school yet, and I'm currently swithering wildly about the whole deferral thing.

My gut feeling is though that 4.6 (the youngest you'd be in Scotland when starting) is too young for most children, even with a largely play-based first year.

6 for formal school.
With good free nursery school before then, like many european countries.

My children's school had one class for the older children, which started in September, and then one for the younger children starting in January. At the end of the year they mixed them up a bit, and did so again at the end of that year, then they were in one big class and then split again, this time with another year (we had 1.5 entry). By that time there was no great divide. I think that most of the gap gets leveled out in a good supportive school, as children have very different developmental paths regardless of age. There is a statistical gap, and associations with other advantages to being born in the Autumn, but that my be nothing to do with school (I'd be interested to see if it was shown in countries that have different cut offs) I've certainly seen suggestions about maternal well being in pregnancy for example (related to seasons).

I think lack of flexibility related to funding mechanisms is the real problem.

Nooka. All recent studies have dismissed maternal health and seasonal effects as causes of what is termed 'the relative age effect' of putting children in 12 month groupings for education and sport. Just google 'relative age effect'. Plenty of international studies and uk ones.

DD1 was a march baby , preemie w/ development delay, she should have started pt in sept, ft in Jan. She just wasn't ready her then school accepted that and she spent an extra term at school nursery and went pt in Jan, ft at Easter (5.1) with the summer babies. DS1 was an April baby, but was so ahead, current primary took him 'early' (by the standards then, it changed this Sept to an all in in Sept intake, god am I glad my DC's missed that!) He should have been a pt Jan, ft Easter, but was taken pt Sept, ft Jan at 4.9, but he could easily have gone at 4.1, he was ready then. DS2 on the other hand, is a November baby, seriously delayed, didn't talk til 3.1 (first word) or walk til 3.6. HE had to start ft Sept as his 5th b'day was before xmas, and even now in Y1 he is already 6yo, but is lagging behind even the summer babies, I personally feel he is only just ready for reception, and could well do with repeating reception (not an option in our area). Different horses for different courses, but AFAIC MOST children are FAR too young at the 4.1 they are taking some of them in reception in my school now, my DS2 is the exception, NOT the rule, he's G&T, only reason he was ready early. DS2's 4.2 stepbrother really struggled on starting reception, and is still struggling, he's been excluded twice, he doesn't have the social skills he will have in a yrs time.

That's interesting jackstar. My two are nine and ten now, so I'm a bit out of date. I wonder if dd has lost her competitive advantage as she is now amongst the youngest in her year, having been virtually the oldest (she's an early Sept baby)? I don't think the drop has particularly helped ds academically, but his social and emotional skills do lag somewhat (although we know when he is pushed academically he tends to behave better, so it's a mixed bag really).

When the individual child is ready to be in whatever environment outside the home is on offer - if it's an informal reception style thingy, then at the age they are eager to go and will get something out of it; if it's formal year 1 or later type stuff then, again, when they are ready and eager to go.

I'm another home educator here - that is, none of my children have yet shown the slightest interest in being put into the kind of formal schooling that is available for their age ranges.

ps so what I mean is: there is no universal optimal age for starting school; the optimal age will depend on the individual child, and the type of school experience that will suit each child will also be individual to that child and might well not involve spending 6 hours a day 5 days a week with 30 other children who happen to have been born within the same September-August range.

I think there can be an awful lot of "my child wasn't ready for school aged X so the school starting age should be later/ my child was raring to go aged Y, so the school starting age should be lower". One can't usefully make such generalisations.

I think kids take in a lot from the moment they are born and the sooner they start the more they learn. Our DSs have been in nursery from 1 yr and have been doing simple structured learning from age 4. They found transition to school a doddle and it has done them no harm.

6 to 7 at earliest.

I wasnt in this country when I started school so did AM only schoool from age 4-7. School was fairly structured but we had total freedom the rest of the day. It seemed muck more laid back than what my children have done in the uk With full day school after school activities etc. I wasnt at all behind when I arrived in the uk in the middle of year 3