Anna Li and Jiani Wu suspended

[RedBirdie]

Ah, there's the big difference. In US high schools, all kids are together for sports, regardless of grade.

 

[Indy]

My kid did a season of baseball last year in 3rd grade, in a league that was 2nd and 3rd graders. He was the oldest kid on his team at 9 and I swear they were the runtiest team we saw. Half the kids on the other teams looked like they were getting ready for middle school but they were still 3rd graders. Our little age appropriate boys didn’t stand a chance.

 

[KorbutFan]

England have changed this rule - all summer born children (defined as those born April 1 - August 31) now have the right to defer compulsory school until the term after their 5th birthday rather than a matter of days/weeks after they turn 4. However parents can opt for their child to start at age 4.

I guess it is an improvement on the old system where summer born children went through life with 2 terms less schooling than autumn born.

This sometimes results in children missing their Reception Year and going straight into Year One and I’ve also heard cases of children having to rejoin their “proper” year once they start secondary school.

 

[MaryClare]

Ah, there's the big difference. In US high schools, all kids are together for sports, regardless of grade.

Yeah in England, team sports are usually u8, u10, u13, u16 or thereabouts. You can compete in a higher age category but not in a lower one. Although possibly not in rugby as you have to be a minimum age for full contact rugby.
Also, unless you’re at private school or one of the small number of grammar schools, school sports aren’t really a big thing. I went to a girls school and the only team we had was netball

 

[arabiandoublefront]

Pretty much--you hear it mostly with boys with summer birthdays, who meet the age cutoff but parents hold them back a year before starting them in school. The logic for it is usually that boys mature more slowly than girls, or that that particular boy isn't mature enough to start school yet (wouldn't be able to sit still in class, etc). There's also the position that if you hold a boy back, so he's the oldest in his class instead of the youngest, he'll have a better time in high school sports.

Not that many people actually do it--about 12%--but it's a major topic of discussion, and the sports reason is given disturbingly often for at least considering it.

Yeah, most people in my class had birthdays between August 1988 and 1989, but I knew at least one person with a July 1988 birthday, which was highly unusual. I can list more students who graduated with me who were more than a year younger than me (October 1988).

 

[RedBirdie]

Outside of school most sports are organized by age. Gymnastics, obviously, but my son does baseball and hockey and both of those are also age based (this is very dependent on the league you play in. Some do go by school grade). But high school sports are such a huge deal in so much of the US and all that age-based stuff goes right out the window and you have 14 year olds competing against 19 year olds.

 

[CameliasFingerpaint]

The idea of holding them back so they can be dominant in sports is bonkers. I've never actually heard of someone doing this, but if it actually happens, that's fucked up level of competitiveness to execute such a plan with a 4 year old.

Thank you @QuietColours.

There are a lot of good academic and social emotional reasons for redshirting a kindergartener. Having taught kindergarten for two years, you very often see a HUGE difference in the kids with fall and late spring birthdays. It makes sense, at that age, a 9 month age difference is huge proportionally to their ages.

 

[FlipSkippy]

In England certainly the birth dates run 1st September to 31st August and children start school at 4. So this September you’ll have children born August 2021 starting school. If your child is a July or August birthday, you have the right to wait until the following year. However if they are born in June or earlier, you don’t have the automatic right to skip and it can usually only be done under recommendation from a medical or educational professional. It’s not very common though, and I’ve never known it to be done for sporting reasons, it’s almost always for social and developmental reasons

We're from the US and moved to England when kiddo was about 9 with a September birthday. Kid got moved back one year (and complained bitterly about it) resulting in going from one of the youngest kids in the class in the US to the oldest in England. I was a bit unhappy about it at first because I'm thinking it's going to take one year longer to get the kid out of high school, but I definitely saw the benefit of going back a year. Kid was always very tiny and treated as the "baby" of the class and acted the same. When moved back a year the kid was developmentally and socially more similar to other kids in the class with a huge leap in maturity and academics. Kid was proud to even earn a "pen license".