Asked by: Baroness Humphreys (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what percentage of children born between (1) 1 September and 30 April, and (2) 1 May and 31 August, were admitted to academy schools in each of the last three years for which figures are available.
Answered by Lord Nash
The department does not hold a dataset which contains both a child’s date of birth and the type of school they attend. The amount of data linkage across datasets for separate years that would be required to answer the question would incur disproportionate costs.
Asked by: Baroness Humphreys (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to allowing the parents of children born prematurely to nominate their child’s due date, rather than the actual date of birth, when applying for school places.
Answered by Lord Nash
We have announced our intention to support summer born children by allowing them to delay entry to the reception year until they are five and for those children to remain with that cohort as they progress through school.
As part of this work we are giving careful consideration to how we can best implement any new arrangements we might put in place, and how we can best support premature children into school.
We want to support these children in the best way we can, however, it is important that we take the time to consider the wider impact of any policy changes.