Parents of three-year-old told he must start school

The boy is due to celebrate his fourth birthday before 1 September and Education, Sport & Culture has said he should start reception this year.

However, he was born prematurely, said his mother – if he had been born on the due date he would not have to start until September 2025.

He was also born during the Covid pandemic, a time when many babies did not develop communication skills as quickly as expected.

‘He doesn’t know his own name yet,’ said his mother.

‘We, as his parents, know that it is not in his best interest to start school.’

The family spoke to the Guernsey Press but asked not to be named.

Deputy Sasha Kazantseva-Miller has asked questions and taken up their case.

They have asked ESC to let him wait a year to enter reception but said they were refused.

‘All we’ve asked Education for is time, and time is free,’ the boy’s mother said. ‘They’ve spent a lot of money arguing with me about it.’

ESC has offered to provide a customised plan for the boy if he goes into reception this year, she added.

‘He doesn’t necessarily need a customised plan. He needs time.

‘These are literally development issues, there’s no learning disability. From the moment you go to prenatal classes you’re told “Don’t expect X, Y and Z to happen at this milestone, because none of that happens”. They’re all individuals and they all do it on their own time.’

She said that she had been told by a special education needs co-ordinator that her son was not yet ready for school, but nobody from ESC had met him to see for themselves.

The only other course of action the parents have is to keep their son out of reception and have him start school in Year 1 in September 2025.

‘We’ve chosen this path, with the space to still fight,’ said the mother, though she said they would continue to press for him to go into reception next year.

‘Dealing with academic problems is easier than dealing with the developmental and emotional problems that we will have in September if we send him.’

An ESC spokesman said that it did not discuss individual cases but it did have a policy on out of year placements, which it believed was largely the same as the UK’s.

Deputy Sasha Kazantseva-Miller has taken up the family’s case and posed written questions to ESC about its handling of out-of-year placements.

The committee told her that it had five requests for out-of-year placements in the last 10 years but declined to say how many were accepted.

She said that UK figures showed that in 2022 there were a total of 3,340 requests, of which 93% were accepted.

‘Given that we often follow UK policy guidance on many educational issues I would expect Guernsey to follow a similar approach, with a high acceptance ratio for any requests made,’ she said.

The UK guidelines on out-of-year placement include the following:

‘Children born from 1 April to 31 August – known as summer-born children – do not need to start school until the September after their fifth birthday, a year after they could first have started school. This is when summer-born children reach compulsory school age.

A child does not need to start school until they reach compulsory school age.

You decide whether your child will start school before compulsory school age – the admission authority cannot decide your child should start school aged four.

The admission authority decides whether children who start school at compulsory school age should be admitted to reception or year 1. They must make this decision in the child’s best interests.

The government believes it is usually not in a child’s best interests to miss the teaching that takes place during the reception year, and that it should be rare for a child to start school in year 1.’