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Angry parent said:
Both my children were born in August. My son at least started school on a mornings-only basis for the first term, but my poor little girl, who has just started this term, had just 2 mornings at school before having to start full time. She was still 3 just a very few weeks ago, and I have to say I find it heartbreaking.
Although she has never been clingy or a ‘Mummy’s-girl’, each evening now she tells me that she “needs Mummy with her all the time”, and when she collapses into bed and into sleep I feel a deep grief and depression descending - I know that her being away from me and being put under pressure at school all day at this young age is fundamentally wrong, but there is no better option. I can’t home-educate and I don’t think that keeping her off for another year is any better - that way she would simply be put straight into year 1 without any of the preparation or friendships that children who had been through the reception year would have.
I am sickened that through no fault of their own, my two children have been deprived of a whole year of the playing, being with Mummy and family, learning about themselves and the world, that children born in the autumn months get. This is a huge deprivation, and ends up in them being further disadvantaged as the least mature and often the least capable in their class - crushing their little egos on a daily basis and making them feel like failures in education before they should even be in there. I know that the school year has to be split somewhere, and someone always has to be the youngest, but at 4 this ‘lost year’ makes a much larger difference than it would at say 6. Why can’t parents of children born in late summer be allowed to choose whether they start reception year at age 4, or at age 5? In my opinion, 4 is simply too, too young.
# 2 October 2009 at 11:48 am

Jo said:
I sympathise hugely. My son was a July baby and not ready for full time school. We took the place then unofficially kept him off between 1-2 days per week, making different excuses or none, and no one made a fuss. However, in retrospect, he wasn’t learning much and it may have damaged his whole school career. At the age of 16 he was still having remedial spelling lessons because his first experiences of spelling were so bewildering and had undermined his confidence. He is a bright boy who now has 2xA and 1xB A levels so perhaps there was no major harm done but regarding the social aspect I think he would have been more confidant with friendships too if he had not had that first school year too young.
Now he is 18 I look back at those years at home when he was little as among the happiest ever. Now I am a working mother and wonder at all those creative things we used to do, trips to places etc and see them as extremely valuable educationally as well as emotionally.
Jo
# 29 December 2009 at 10:00 am

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