Deferring entry for Reception

[cdoth]

Looking for experiences/advice from those who have deferred their child for Reception entry.

My DS has severe social & communication delays with suspected ASD (currently on the pathway for a diagnosis), he is under SALT, paediatrician etc but no EHCP at the moment. Was advised by nursery they are gathering as much good quality evidence as possible before submitting but now going to push for this as much as possible as I know the wait times are extremely long.

He is due to start Reception in September but hasn't got his first choice place school, which is the one connected to his nursery at the moment. My reasoning for this is the fact that he is so behind other kids his age and deferring would give him another 12 months to develop and we may also be further on in terms of the EHCP. According to our LA website, this is an option.

But just how realistic is this? Is this likely to affect him a lot in the future? I'm worried about the implications it could have down the line.

Whatever you do you should request an EHCNA ASAP, IPSEA have a model letter you can use.

If you do defer you need to think about the plan, especially if things don’t go quite how you hope. Deferring won’t necessarily solve the problems you have.

DS may still not have an EHCP naming the school you want. If you don’t have to appeal the process takes 20 weeks, but many do have to appeal, some more than once and if you haven’t yet applied and have to appeal 2 or even 3 times you would be pushing it for September 2024. What would you do then? If you don’t have a finalised EHCP by next September DS may not get into the preferred school via the normal admissions. Also, even placing DS out of chronological year group may see a large gap between him and peers (that may widen as they go through the year/subsequent years).

What will DS do for 23/24? Is he summer born? Whilst it is generally considered good practice for DC to remain with the out of chronological year group cohort, without an EHCP admission authorities can decide for themselves whether a pupil should be educated outside their chronological year group, so there is always the risk that even if one agrees others won’t.

Perhaps he can start school in September and if necessary you can request that he repeats Reception.

I say go for the deferral now. It will probably be relatively straightforward with the council and school given he’s having SLT, but they will definitely try and persuade you not to.

We wanted to defer starting reception with our August born child with DLD but were persuaded not to by the head. It was the wrong decision, and she “repeated” year 1, and is now (year4) definitely with the right peer group and making progress. BUT it was a bit tricky to navigate and explain at the time. Would’ve been much easier just to start a year later.

Stick to your guns. You know your child best.