Redshirting - now available in the UK!
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Anonymous
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Interesting. Up until now you couldn't hold your kid back at all.
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/sep/08/parents-of-summer-born-children-get-right-to-delay-start-of-school "Parents of summer-born children are to be given the right to delay their child’s education for a year, with the reassurance that they will not then be forced to skip a year to catch up with their peers.....It is currently up to the authority responsible for school admissions to make the decision on which year group a summer-born five-year-old should be admitted to. A child is not legally required to go to school until they are five, but some parents who have delayed their summer-born child starting school have then been told they will have to skip a year and lose a whole year’s education. Under the new rules, parents can now expect their child to remain in the same year group throughout." |
Anonymous
| Poor Brits. Now they'll have to deal with this nonsense. |
Anonymous
| No matter how many times this comes up, I don't understand why people get so worked up about parents having still-limited-but-reasonable choices about when their child is ready for school. |
Anonymous
Because it's bullshit. A child being left back in K? Really? There's no reason for it. |
Anonymous
Because this particular choice is only available to those able to afford the choice. |
Anonymous
And over time as more students are redshirted, changes the environment and expectations for all the students further disadvantaging children who already had no choice. |
Anonymous
But there are reasons for it - which is why reasonable people sometimes do it. I can't speak for the parents trying to get a leg up for their kids - but there are parents who made the choice because their child was actually developmentally delayed or some such reason. |
Anonymous
There are many redshirted kids in private school. I've never met a since one who was left back for development delays. Not one. Those kids should not have been allowed to be held back because their parents thought it was a good idea or it would somehow give them an advantage. |
Anonymous
It all evens out in private school, though, because private schools all work a year ahead. Right? |
Anonymous
17:14 here, I actually fully support red-shirting in cases where there is a true need such as a developmental delay. What I don't like is when parents decide not to send their kids because they'd rather have their kids be on the more mature side, don't want their child to be the youngest, etc. When all of those people red-shirt as well, it raises the overall maturity of the class, and the expectations go up accordingly. And then the children these policies were really intended to address, the children who need that extra year to be able to achieve roughly in line with the rest of the class, are hurt even more by all of those parents who just want to "give their child the gift of time." |
Anonymous
Kids with developmental delays are typically the ones who will benefit most from starting school because it will increase their access to services. And many of them are already in the public school system through special needs preschools. I truly don't think it's kids with actual delays that are typically being held back. I really would love schools to enforce the age guidelines in a system like England used to have, so that if a 7 year old registers for public school, they start in first grade. So your "immature" (or whatever) child can get the "gift of time" with you at home when they should be in K, but they are still in the age-appropriate grade moving forward. |
Anonymous
Wrong. |
Anonymous
Agree. The problem isn't the children who are held back for legitimate reasons. Its that a significant and growing number of people are holding back their special snowflake in order to help them be academically superior to their peers or physically superior. Both with the intention of them being better able to perform at the high school and college level. Literally, they openly want their children to be more advanced from their peers... and if they are simply an average 4 or 5 year old then the faulty logic is that holding them back will somehow make them more advanced. So your 6 year old is now potentially going to kindergarten with children up to 2 years younger. Of course they will be more advanced at this point- they have had 2 additional years to grow and develop. And, given that the low income students (who likely have had less experience, less schooling, less of everything prior to starting school) are more likely to be the younger students, the real difference is far greater than simply 2 years of experience. And because of that difference, and more advanced development, you wonder why your child is the only one in the class who can read. And now your child is bored. And the teachers need to differentiate the learning. And the standards are too low. And the system is flawed. And your special snowflake needs more, more, more from a system that is failing him. |
Anonymous
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1. Children with developmental delays should already be in the educational system via Early Intervention( birth to age 3), after that time they transition to Special Education services provided through the local school district.
2. Allowing parental choice can create an unmanageable age range(18mos-2yrs) When I lived in Pennsylvania, Kindergarten red shirting was common. Educated, affluent parents used the rational of maturity to justify their decisions, basically the criteria was if their child has a summer birthday they would delay Kindergarten entry for an additional year. Some parents openly cited desire for their child to be bigger in MS & HS to gain a sports advantage or the ability to drive before their friends-as an educator, I found this appalling. 3. There are no universal birthday cut off for Kindergarten, they are determined locally. September 1 was the cutoff where I lived, there was no flexible ily or exceptions. . Therefore, my son was 5 years and 11 months when he started Kindergarten, I would have preferred he start the year before. When we moved to DC, the cutoff was September 30. |
Anonymous
As a parent of a child held back for legitimate reasons - it is sometimes hard for me to read all the negativity out there about redshirting. I guess I should just ignore it because we don't fit the stereotype of parents trying to gain some sort of advantage for our child. In fact the child we held back is barely on grade level even now. I wish people would think before they snark about this. |