11 Plus Exams Forum

http://www.theguardian.com/education/20 ... -of-school" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

High time. Too late for mine.

“When a child starts in the reception class of a primary school they can be as young as four years and one day old, a whole year younger than the statutory school starting age, and two or three years younger than the school starting age in all other European countries with the exception of Malta,” he said.

Why????
Gosh this makes me so fed up.
Why are uk governments so obsessed with separating kids from parents during the day, to the extent they are paying even wealthy couples thousands of pounds a year to send their kids to day care just so long as both parents work full time and neither, perish the thought, is bringing up their own offspring full time.
At least this ruling allows some flexibility, so long as people will still be allowed to start their summer child directly into year one if they so wish as well.

southbucks3 wrote:

“When a child starts in the reception class of a primary school they can be as young as four years and one day old, a whole year younger than the statutory school starting age, and two or three years younger than the school starting age in all other European countries with the exception of Malta,” he said.

Why????
Gosh this makes me so fed up.
Why are uk governments so obsessed with separating kids from parents during the day, to the extent they are paying even wealthy couples thousands of pounds a year to send their kids to day care just so long as both parents work full time and neither, perish the thought, is bringing up their own offspring full time.
At least this ruling allows some flexibility, so long as people will still be allowed to start their summer child directly into year one if they so wish as well.

+++++1!!!!

Whatever choices people make about childcare are there own, but the whole government is following this blinkered view and program of 1. Getting all adults mum and dad back to work as soon as possible and 2. Constantly hoovering up all children in an attempt to capture those from the lowest and most disadvantaged groups.

It makes me so mad, especially when nurseries looked down their nose at us for daring to only ask for one day per week and implying our children would be poorly socialised. But woe betide if I'd ever dared suggest that those in full time nursery might also suffer (not saying they do, just that any knocking of stay at home parenting is ok, but any knocking of full time working is not).

And my boys were 4 and 2 weeks and I had no luck in delaying their entry. To this day I feel that whilst academically fine, emotionally I think they could have done with another year at home.

Sigh.

http://www.theguardian.com/education/20 ... ren-behind" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

DC17C wrote:http://www.theguardian.com/education/20 ... ren-behind

I kept two of mine part time until the term they turned 5 and it worked for us. Two were fine starting younger. Schools do put you under pressure to go full time though so maybe that is something that could be dealt with.

I wonder what the 11 plus areas will do. Ours states very clearly that over age candidates will not be accepted at present so will they be forced to change this policy.
Also how will age standardisation work, there presumably will have to be two different August groups, but will this then cause a numbers issue, as presumably there must be a minimum number of candidates per month for standardisation to be valid?

(Personally I would have loved to put my Sept born into the year ahead, but there is no mention of this being allowed.)

Nice to have more choice about this than before, if it comes to pass. But mire implications to think aboutincluding those mentioned in the post above.

If summer borns do get the right to start reception in the year following their fifth birthday, I wonder if they will just miss out on some time in education at the other end instead? There's no mention of how many years in total of education they will be entitled to, nor any mention of age rules about secondary admission and how it will work in selective testing fir grammars.

It will make planning for school places hard too as the size of each new year r cohort in an authority area will have an element of unknown in it. Also, if a lot of summer born children start the year later in reception, then all that will happen is that the spring borns will seem very young in comparison with the rest, and on it goes.

Maybe scotland can help with the issues though - they have been allowing this for years.

I presume it is only a small minority who take up this possibility as it's another year of fees of some sort unless you keep don't send your child to any provision over and above what is currently available free of charge in an ofsted registered early years setting or you prefer not to use early years education settings at all.

Interesting point about the transition to secondary school, especially in terms of selective schools / areas.

One scenario: if the selective schools insist on going by age, i.e.only testing those within a one-year band, then some children will have to sit the selection test at the beginning of year 5 rather than year 6. At which stage, some of them will still already be nearly five months older than some of the 'summer' (April, May and in my book, most of June, actually being in spring) children whose parents decided not to keep them back a year and so are already in year 6. (Whether they then move up to selective schools, if successful, the next school year, or 'bank' the result and carry on through year 6 at primary, is another issue).

At which point, I'm guessing that 'not having had as many years in formal education' will become the new ' they may have had the same amount of time in formal education but they are still younger'. (And yes, I do have a 'summer' - or late spring by my reckoning - child, who did well in our non-age-standardised 11+, as well as a September-born who failed).