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The Local Authority will admit a child to a maintained primary/infant school at the start of the academic year in which he/she will turn 5 years old. However, the legal requirements confirm that parents are able to delay the admission of their child until the term following their 5th birthday.
The Local Authority is obliged to ensure that any offer of a school place is held for parents who wish for their child’s admission into Reception to be deferred until later in the academic year.
A parent, however, is not able to defer entry beyond the term following the child’s fifth birthday, nor beyond the school year for which the application was made.
Summer Term Births
In the case of a child born during the summer term, they too are not legally required to attend school until the term following their fifth birthday / the September after the normal year of entry for a Reception age child.
In such circumstances, however, the Local Authority will continue to ensure that children continue to follow their chronological year group and therefore the child would be admitted into year 1 and not Reception. It is only in exceptional circumstances that the Local Authority will authorise the admission of a summer term birth into a year group that is outside the normal year of entry. In such circumstances, there will need to be a suitable evidence base (e.g. report from an Educational Psychologist) that suggests the chronological year group is not suitably able to meet the needs of the child concerned.