Cancel nursery P1 (Scotland) deferred place after starting the deferred nursery year

[thoughtfuldad]

Hi All,

Dad of 5-year-old here in Edinburgh. I was wondering if any of you could help. We have a 5-year-old who we deferred entry to P1 (we felt it was the right thing to do at the time and was advised to do so by the council-run nursery teachers for social and emotional reasons but we were told academically he was fine). He is a start of October 2018 baby. But now at the end of November 2023, it feels like he is more than ready for P1 (he has developed a lot in the last six months).

Also, he is not making any friends this year in his nursery. Every morning he doesn't want to go to nursery and it's a huge struggle to get him there. The other children all seem and look much younger than him and have baby-like faces and just seem generally much younger than him, I think he is now the oldest in his nursery. He doesn't seem to be able to connect with any nursery children this year. His nursery best friends (3 boys) from last year who were roughly the same age as him all moved on to P1 Primary and now it feels (and looks) like he is too old and mature for the kids in his nursery.

He desperately wants to go to "big boy" school himself and keeps talking about it and wants to move on to Primary school and wear school uniform clothes. He is technically very capable and loves building Lego robots, working with leavers, and gears and electronic circuits already. My specialist areas are Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science so I am able to support and encourage him in those areas. His language skills are very advanced and he can easily hold conversations with older children and adults, and in fact spends his time with older children in the community garden that we have behind the house.

My wife and I are thinking it is best to try and move him to P1 for January 2024 (the start of the second term in P1 in his catchment school). I am thinking that if we leave him in nursery for this academic year then in Primary school he would be about 1.5 years older than the youngest child in his year group and on average probably a year older than most of his peers which might be too big of an age gap and prevent him from connecting and making friendships with his peers as especially even now he seems so advanced in certain areas.

We will chat with the nursery before making a final decision but does anyone know what the procedures are for canceling the funded P1 deferred place at a council-run nursery during the academic year and trying to get their child into P1 Primary for a January start?

Any advice on this would be much appreciated.

My grandson was deferred for much the same reason and has matured really well, this second year in nursery. The nursery teacher is working on initial sounds formation in writing and working on numbers too. They take him to primary one so he gets used to the school (same campus). There is a small group who are working well and spurring each other on. He has no time to be bored. The nursery also promote responsibility and being kind to others. I think you should talk to the nursery to find out how they can support him, given he is halfway through the academic year.

And if so, why was the deferral chosen?

'To give them an advantage doing their Highers' is usually cited..... or so they can drink at uni.

I don't see the point in a nursery teaching sounds. It will only have to be repeated when they come to school. If a child is at the point of being taught to read (not picking it up naturally, as some children do do), but being actually taught, they should be in school.

My nephew has an end of January birthday and was deferred because emotionally he wouldn't have coped with school. Academically he was bored at nursery but the nursery tweaked their preschool programme so that he was catered for. He is now 13 and in S2.
Please don't try to enroll your DS for school in January. He will have missed out on so much of the schooling foundations. How do you plan to catch him up on the phonics that he has missed?

It won’t be repeated when they go to school - classes have pupils with a huge range of ability, they get differentiated work.

Unless there’s something going really wrong in the school.

What a lovely passive aggressive comment at the end... I see from your posting history that you dropped out of teacher training so you're obviously an expert.

There is no primary school in the land that will miss out teaching initial sounds. In reality, they will need to sit through it again with the rest of their class.

I'm so glad you said this. I was beginning to wonder if schools are now like some children's version of Stepford Wives with every child advancing at exactly the same pace.

One of mine was reading fluently at 4, was good at maths. Unreasonable to expect 29 other children to be doing the same anymore than holding them back when my perfectly happy but very uninterested in reading or maths till he was in year 4 or 5.

I'm not surprised to be honest given he's an October birthday. I deferred DD but she was born 28 Feb so literally would be the youngest and she missed months of nursery due to Covid when she was 3. Even then she was very ready for school months before she went. She has a few October birthdays in her class and the kids do look a lot bigger than the others. I think you just let it be and know that when he is in high school it'll be an advantage.

I was curious as to my posting history, as I don’t remember posting about that recently. I can’t find anything from this decade.

I’d offer you my CV, but with that much dedication to research I’m a bit worried you’d turn up at my door 😐

Agree with the PP. There must have been a compelling reason why you chose to defer your DC. That reason can't have changed in 6 months. Also agree that there is unlikely to be room in many P1 classes for an extra pupil.

It can be done. Our local school accepted a child in January last year that had been deferred.

It took the rest of the year for them to catch up, but they're there now.

Just to say we were able to get him into P1 at his local school for January (Term 2) - I think the school had a little "assessment" for him before starting (i.e making sure he could settle in class, make some markings with pens/pencils, make conversation, just some general basic stuff which was done in the school for an hour in December within the class setting). He passed that "assessment" with the teachers all smiles and the school seemed happy to let him in during the school year in January for the start of Term 2.

Anyway, after a couple of weeks in January, they did a much longer assessment and they said he knows his letters and is blending already, etc so academically is fine (we did prep him a bit with numbers, letters, counting, telling the time, money, etc, e.g. the Early Years curriculum during the Xmas holidays). And then we had a long meeting with the teachers involved after his first few weeks - they said he has fitted in perfectly and made friends, and the teachers said we had made the right decision to exit him from deferment and enter him into P1. They are very happy with him.

More importantly, he just seems emotionally a lot happier, more stable and is happy to go to school (no more fighting to get him dressed and enter the building). We are happy that he is happy and that we made his wish to enter P1 happen for him.

That's a good update OP, glad it's working out well for him, and the school have been supportive throughout.

Brilliant news. I hope he continues to do so well.