staying back a year?

[JoMaman]

We are doing a home VB programme with ds1, with gradual integration into a nursery placement (currently 2 hours per day), and the nursery is attached to a primary school. He's doing really well on the VB, but speech is coming very slowly and he only has emerging awareness of his peers, so we (and all professionals involved) think it is best for him to repeat a year of nursery in September, rather than join reception as he is supposed to (he's nearly 4 now).

School and LEA are OK with this, so they tell me, and we are happy with this plan as it will give him another year to work on his speech and language and socialisation. Right now it is far from clear whether he will be able to handle mainstream with support in the long term, but we want to try it for a few years to see if he can catch up.

Has anyone else done this with their dcs? Are you glad you did? What are the drawbacks? Is it problematic for them to be chronologically older than their peers as they get older? If they stayed in mainstream what happened when they got to the end of primary?

Sorry for all the questions - my gut feeling is that this is the right thing to do, but as the LEA and school are making it so easy I am feeling suspicious! I'm also nervous to not apply for a primary place for next year when I don't have it in writing that the nursery will take him again.

Thanks in advance

At my DS's special preschool this used to be the norm. DC would do their reception year at the special school and then repeat their reception year in MS, if MS was their destination. It worked really well, until the 30 only law came in (initially there was extra funding available for an extra teacher in the first few years, this stopped in about 2004.)

The 30 only in infants law meant that a child couldn't defer a year and stay down if the school was fully subscribed. You couldn't 'take' the place of a child of the correct age. The only way to avoid this problem is to have the year behind explicitly required on the statement.

Back when my DS started school, many DC started a year late with no need for a statement. That extra year was all some DC needed to be on a par with their classmates.

So long as you don't worry about other parents knowing that your DC has SN, I'd go for it. Otherwise have some handy excuse made up to explain 8th birthday parties when everyone else is 6 and 7. That's the only time it generally becomes an issue. I don't know about secondary, it might not be 'cool' but in the grand scheme of things, having SN isn't 'cool' either and this is minor in comparison.

thanks very much for the replies. Thanks for the warning about the deferral process. I will talk to SEN about including it in the statement as we are currently in the draft stage [groans at prospect of yet another conversation about drafting which will undoubtedly add another fortnight to the process]

We have just made the same decision for our DD, for the same reasons - we've agonised over it but in the end the "gut feel" won!

In our LEA, the following "rules" apply and so you may want to check the situ in your area so that you're fully prepared for all eventualiies. Having said that, I believe that a lot of the rules on deferrment are LEA specific so this may be of no use at all :

1. We need an Ed Psych report to support the deferral, even tho DD already has a statement.
2. The deferral will be written into her statement.
3. If she were later to transfer into a SS primary, she would go into the correct year for her age. I'm not at all concerned about this - our local SS mixes years anyway and has KS1 and KS2 groupings based on needs and ability.
4. If she were to transfer into a SS Secondary, the LEA would prefer that she transfer into her correct chronological year group and start at the same time as her peers and so she might go straight from Yr 5 in MS primary to Yr 7 in SS secondary. I'm less comfortable with this but see the logic of her starting with her peer group.
5. If she were to stay in MS all the way, then a MS secondary should honour the deferral - especially if it's in her statement.
6. Now for the crunch - she will have to leave school at the end of the academic year in which she turns 19. This means that she will only be entitled to 2 years in 6th form rather than the 3 years that is offically available. So in effect, the LEA claws the year back. This is the bit I'm most bothered by but have decided to go with what feels right for now and worry about 6th form issues a bit further down the line. Quite frankly I don't have any expectation that she'll be in a school for 6th form but she may very well prove me wrong

Good luck with everything

Messmonster, that's almost exactly what my LA says. In SS there's no real point deferring as all the DC are delayed to some extent.

thanks for the info messmonster, I will double check with my LEA but its good to have a point of reference.
Like you, I feel that issues with sixth form etc would be annoying but with the current outlook for ds1, it would be a high quality problem to have if he gets that far :)