Few women hope their pregnancy will linger on past their due date, but those expecting at the end of August would be forgiven for desiring exactly that. For the issue of Reception entry for summer-born children weighs heavily on these parents.
And understandably so, as there’s evidence to suggest that summer-born children do less well in academic tests, and can suffer poor self-esteem and receive mistaken diagnoses of educational disorders.
From the parents’ point of view, the reluctance of some school admissions authorities to allow some summer-borns to defer Reception entry for a year can seem mysterious. While there are arguments to be made against blanket deferred admission (strongly put by some educators on the Mumsnet forums), from parents’ perspective it can sometimes feel as though local authorities are reluctant to consider each case on its merits.
After all, the same number of children would be passing through the school years, just in a slightly different order - and with fewer deeply unready children requiring extra teacher input and dedicated supervision around the water table.
Again and again, when issues like this are discussed on Mumsnet, parents return to the need for discretion. On the whole, they believe that individual headteachers should be able to make decisions about individual children, with strong input from parents.
Some summer-born four-year-olds will be raring to go; others may settle successfully with a bit of extra input; some will be academically fine, but socially unready, others vice-versa; many will come to the end of their school careers with all the age-related blips ironed out, but some will not.
It’s a rare parent who tries to defer their child’s school entry for anything other than good reasons, and parents can feel baffled (as well as upset) that their knowledge of their own child’s readiness isn’t given greater weight.
The point at which a child starts school usually marks a new, slightly more liberated phase for parents too, and not many turn up their noses at 30 weeks of free education and socialisation - thereby entering into prolonged disputes with admissions authorities - unless they’ve got a firm basis for thinking it’s a bad idea.
Parents in this position generally recognise that deferred entry isn’t a panacea and can bring its own problems; they’re understandably offended by the suggestion that they’re just trying to game the system and procure academic advantage for their children.
The single strongest position that comes through, whenever this is discussed, is that children do not legally have to be in full-time education until they’re five, and that when they do, they should be entitled to access the whole of the crucial Reception year.
Nick Gibb’s announcement of changes to the admissions code to enable this to happen last year was greeted with great enthusiasm (as one Mumsnet user said, “It’s so brilliant that finally sense will prevail!”); let’s hope that parents, schools and admissions authorities can all now work together to make this small but significant room for manoeuvre work to the benefit of all Reception children.
Justine Roberts is founder and chief executive of Mumsnet. See mumsnet.com/talk/education
@justine_roberts
This is an article from the 24 June edition of TES. This week’s TES magazine is available in all good newsagents. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here
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