Here in the uk children start reception in the september when they are four. My ds is five at the beginning of september and will be the eldest child in his class.

Some of the children in his class have only just turned four. It seems that children here start school a year earlier. I have never heard of red shirting. Do you have the same opportunity to get a child in early?

I tried to get my son in early for last year, but to no avail. It is virtually unheard of.

Good question! No, generally speaking you don't have the same opportunity to get them in early. Usually that's a terrible slog.

No, here in the US we are only allowed to hold our children back, not allow them to advance forward!

Redshirting is very popular at our school. At age 5, in Kindergarten, my son with a May birthday was the second youngest in the class with boys who were much bigger and older. Some of the older boys were bullies. My son's most vivid memory of Kindergarten is when two of these older, bigger boys challenged him to a fight on the playground. He said that luckily he was wearing a watch and knew that the bell was about to ring so instead of looking for the teacher, he put his fists up like he was ready to fight, but didn't have to defend himself because the bell did ring in time for him to avoid a fight. The attitude here is that boys will be boys and teachers seem to ignore some of the problems. I didn't think it was fair that so many boys were held back a year and that my son, in addition to an inappropriate education had to worry about dealing with these older boys on the playground.

It isn't an academic edge that most of the people here hold their kids back for--it is sports. The older, bigger boys are better at football against the schools who do not redshirt.

This is where the "logic" of the edumacators breaks down:

Q: Little Johnny, age 5, can read at a 3rd grade level and do multiplication problems with re-numbering. Could we maybe let him skip K and go to 1st grade? Here is the evidence showing he can do this stuff.

A: IMPOSSIBLE! His social development will be negatively impacted by the lack of age-peer interactions!!

AND

Q: Little Jimmy, age 5, will attend K when he's 6 so he can still play HS football when he's 19. Is that okay?

A: Of course!

Okay, so this post is rather, emm, biting, but seriously...what is the official reason for not worrying about age-peer interactions when a 6-year-old is thrown in with a bunch of younger kids??


Val

That's the primary reason. I've seen it done.

The flip side of it is that most of these redshirted "football stars" end up mentally stunted when they graduate. Most don't have any unusual athletic talent anyway.

Today I came across an interesting article against redshirting posted on another board, http://naecs.crc.uiuc.edu/position/trends2000.html , "A position statement developed by National Association of Early Childhood Specialists in State Departments of Education". There a few nuggets here and there that some of you may be interested in.