Familiesrecommend Blog

We have a guest blogger, who would like to remain anonymous, who talks about the worries of her son starting school too early.

I know that every parent worries about their child going to school, will they make friends? Will they know what to do? Will they be able to cope?

These questions seem big in my mind at the moment, as my son who has just turned three should be starting school not this September but next (he will have just turned four). He has a rare condition, which has slowed his development. But his paediatrician thinks that he should be able to attend mainstream school with support. That pleases me immensely.

However, what doesn’t please me and which keeps me awake at night (and which is creating a lump in my throat as I type) is the difficulty we have trying to make sense of the various agencies and bodies involved in School entry for a special needs child.

We talked to a local primary school headmaster, who kindly agreed to discuss our son’s situation and give the opinion of the people who would be teaching him. Basically he said, we should try and defer him a year, to give him a chance to catch up. This was something we had always wanted to do, as our son was also born prematurely and ended up in an earlier school year than he should have been born into (Born in July but due in October).

So you would think this would be straightforward. We met with the officials of the LEA, who were very nice but basically said, you don’t need to send him to school until the September after his 5^th birthday but he would enter straight into year one, not reception class. That’s not what we want. We want to defer him so he has the extra year to catch up developmentally and start his education like he would have done had he been born in October. But we can’t do that apparently as he could leave school legally at 16 without completing his compulsory education. Oh PLEASE!

So decisions on my son’s ability to start school are being based on something that could happen in 13 years time. And as I see it, lots of kids leave school without completing their education at 15 – so the argument to me is a little flawed. Plus – just meeting my husband and myself you would see that we are well educated, dedicated to our son and utterly behind our son staying at school until he has finished his compulsory education.

What I am concerned about is that my son will be overwhelmed by school (even reception class) if he starts when they expect him to. It’s well known that babies born prematurely take longer to catch up developmentally than their peers and then add into the mix a developmentally delaying condition. It seems to make sense to me and everyone I talk to about it. I don’t want an unhappy child who cannot cope with school because we have been forced to send him there before he is ready.

Ok, you are probably thinking that I am over reacting. And perhaps I am. But I know my son and his abilities.

Our speech therapist has been amazing, and is organising for us to see the local educational psychologist, and my husband has been in touch with our paediatrician and health visitor – who can see our argument is based on fact not supposition. It’s a minefield of who to speak to and what you need to do and by when. I am worrying about it now even though its a whole year off. I still have that lump in my throat as I finish.

Monday, September 6th, 2010, 08:40   |   Education and Learning, Pre-School  |  RSS feed |  Respond  |  Trackback