Should I enrol my daughter in school "early"?

Would you enrol your child early, even if you knew it meant they would repeat a year?

“Oh she has two big brothers she will be ready.”

“There is no harm in waiting and spending that extra year with them.”

“You can always repeat them”.

My three-year old is at least two years off starting school (or is that three) and yet it has started already. The should-I start her “early” at 4 ½ or should-I wait till she is 5/1/2?

The constant scrutiny of her milestones, the back-and-forth decision every time the subject comes up. The pros. The cons. I’ve read the research and I know each child is different yet the decision seems momentous.

Being a late April baby in NSW it’s a decision that is ours alone. The only requirement she has is that she is enrolled before her 6th birthday. What surprised me greatly was the amount of people who told me to just start her as I “can always repeat her later”.

It seems not to be an unusual school of thought with statistics out this week that in NSW alone 15,000 primary school students have repeated over the past four years, with almost 7000 redoing kindergarten. Nationally it seems 8-10% of students repeat a grade at some point in school life.

Dr Helen McGrath, a leading Australian education and psychology researcher told Fairfax Media that repeating school years is like “playing Russian roulette”.

“You need to be fairly sure that you’re prepared for the possibility that it may in fact set the child back,” she said.

It resonated with me as I repeated way way back about thirty odd years ago and I don’t remember it being something you could be so blasé about. I was a May birthday and small for my age. In fifth grade I was struggling to fit in and not doing as well academically as I could have.

In hindsight repeating was of great benefit to me. I flourished socially and shot to the top of the class academically and stayed there for the rest of my schooling. But who is to say that I wouldn’t have made that progression anyway?

But mentally repeating was a challenge.

It was embarrassing socially to be the one left behind. My former friends ignored me (social death in 5th grade at an all girls school). My former bullies tormented me even more. That’s why the thought of making my daughter go through that herself is paralyzing.

Geoff Scott, the president of the NSW Primary Principals’ Association, told Fairfax Media that students commonly repeat because of poor social skills or maturity levels not academic outcomes.

According to the new statistics in NSW the number of public school students repeating has been declining with the number of kindergarten repeaters dropping from 1,908 in 2010 to 1,485 last year. However in some areas these figures actually prove to be doing the opposite.

In 2012 News Limited reported that the numbers of children aged about 4 1/2 entering kindergarten at some government primary schools in Sydney’s west had almost doubled.

"In 2011 we had nine little children with June or July birthdays -- now we are up to 16 enrolled and we haven't even started the school year yet. Parents are worried about childcare fees," Public Schools Principals Forum chairwoman Cheryl McBride told The Daily Telegraph.

Personally I know of several children nearly 15 or 16 months younger than others in my son’s first grade year who started school as their parents had no other choice financially. The plan for these kids is to repeat them in 5th grade or year 7.

In NSW high schools more students repeat year 10 than year 7, 8 and 9 combined, with almost 5000 NSW students repeating year 10 between 2010 and 2013.

Interestingly in QLD (where preschool is government subsidized) in 2010 of the 175 children approved to repeat their pre-Prep year, 139 were boys.

Obviously it is every parents own decision, and every parent no doubt has the primary interests of their own child at heart but it seems that the experts aren’t convinced repeating kids is beneficial for the students. Even if it IS beneficial for their parents.

Research published in the British Educational Research Journal in 2011 found there were more effective ways to help students than repeating.

Professor Andrew Martin from the University of Sydney told the ABC that "we should be providing an educational response to these students. That means we identify the problem or issue at hand, and then provide targeted assistance to that child. Say literacy or numeracy, or issues around study or organisational skills.”

And yet the problem still remains for children like my daughter to start or not to start?

Would you enrol your child in school a year early?

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