By: Holly Yeager the Times Online
Thursday, May 14, 2009
You've paid for the finest nursery and started the Chinese tutoring early, filled your child's room with books and showered him with improving toys from the day he was born. So what else can the modern parent do to give a child a leg up in the big, bad world of education? How about delaying the start of primary school, holding him back a year even before he gets his feet through the classroom door?
Last week Ed Balls, the Children, Schools and Families Secretary, announced that parents who believe their children are too young to start school at the age of 4 will be able to keep them in free full-time nursery classes for a year. Campaigners say that the scheme, to be introduced in England in September 2011, will particularly benefit summer-born children, who are young for their year, and boys who are often not mature enough to start reception year at the age of 4.
The practice of "holding children back" in the hope of giving them a head start is already common in schools across the US. But does it really have a positive effect? While some American parents make the move based on concerns about their five-year-old's readiness to enter kindergarten - the first year of primary school in America - critics say that all too often there are other forces at play.
"Some parents are being very egocentric," says Frederick Morrison, a professor of education and psychology at the University of Michigan, who studies the phenomenon. "They just want their kids to be stars, they want them to be noticed by the teacher and that won't happen if they are shorter than or lighter than or more immature than the other kids in class."
To read the entire news release, see the Times Online website at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6220717.ece.
