Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that guidance on the progression of summer-born children from primary to secondary education is applied (a) clearly and (b) consistently across all schools.

The department keeps its guidance for schools and parents about requests for summer born children to be admitted out of their normal age group under review and updates it as required.

The guidance for schools is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/summer-born-children-advice-for-admission-authorities.

The guidance for parents is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/summer-born-children-school-admission.

The guidance is clear that it is rarely in a child’s best interests to miss a year of their education by being admitted to primary school in year 1 rather than reception, or to secondary school in year 8 rather than year 7. Therefore, if a parent requests their summer born child start their reception year aged 5, it should be rare for such a request to be refused.

The department conducts regular surveys of local authorities and parents to keep this issue under review. These show that only a small proportion of parents of summer born children request that they are admitted out of their normal age group, and the vast majority of such requests are agreed. The findings can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/summer-born-children-research-and-guidance.