“Coming soon” on BBC iPlayer in case you missed it tonight is a film by Chrissy Sturt on BBC One’s Inside Out South East. Chrissy reports on “the parents fighting to change how summer-born children are matriculated into school”.

Shortly after the programme aired, Darren Doyle, the parent of a child of a summer born child made the effort to post his daughter Katy’s story on this site (you can read it in full HERE). She attended a primary school in Scotland, where the school year cut-off was March, and when Darren’s job moved the family to England, the strict admissions authority he first encountered here wanted her to enter Year 8 (thereby missing out on ALL of Year 7), just so that she would be in her ‘correct’ chronological year group.

I also know of a similar case with a child from Australia whose parents have been told she must miss a year of junior school in order to enter the English primary school system in the ‘right’ year group.

These examples demonstrate how admissions inflexibility can have potentially damaging consequences that reach far beyond a child’s start in reception or year 1.