August 30 birthday, school thinks he's SN

[noreallyitsnothing]

Does anyone have experience of summer babies and SN?
My son has an August 30 birthday and is behind in year one at school, where they want to put him on the SN register. They say he doesn't have learning difficulties and is bright, but that he's behind the rest of the class. But the rest of the class mostly have Autumn term birthdays, so isn't he expected to be behind?
From our point of view, he's where he should be at his age - reading phonics books no problem, learning trickier words one by one, contributing in class, doing simple maths. It's not his fault if he's behind the older kids.
The school says I'm worried about labeling, but it's not that at all. I just think they're complicating a problem when they could for instance just move him down a year (they say the local education authority wouldn't allow this).
If he'd been born two days later and was in the year below, his progress would be sufficient or more than sufficient.
I've read a lot about summer babies being put on the SN register more than other children.
Anyone have any similar experience? Your advice/experience would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

I think that mummysauraus was responding to this line in jammimi's post - it's jammimi who was careless with words.

"School reasured us he was just young not thick and to reassess it this year."

I bristled at mummysaurus's comment, too, until I remembered seeing the word upthread. I think this is a problem with forums like this where you reply to a whole thread, rather than a post in a thread - unless you're absolutely clear, it's difficult to follow the smaller exchanges that happen within a conversation as a whole.

Well, schools are supposed to build a degree of differentiation into their lesson plans/MLPs. So there should be a range of expected learning outcomes and within this they will already be giving more support to the slower learners. But if you still don't make progress, then by definition you have a Special Educational Need - it doesn't mean you have, or ever will have, a diagnosis.

But again, I think the word "register" is HUGELY confusing here. It's not some master government list of disabled kids, and it won't follow him round for the rest of his life. It's a form the school fill in to get extra funding from the LEA that year while someone is sitting helping him with his reading. That is all it is.

Mojolost - the register is for SEN. Special Educational Needs are distinct from Special Needs, as it is possible for a child to have one without the other. A child can have SEN such as dyslexia without being regarded as having special needs as such, for example.