Delaying children’s school entry linked to poor academic performance
HEALTHCANAL | 21 February 2015
Delaying school entry could cause poorer academic performance, according to new research from the University of Warwick and funded by the Nuffield Foundation.
Many parents are keen to hold their children back a year if they were born prematurely or in the summer months. They argue their child will not be mature enough to start school and previous research has suggested children who are born more than three weeks before their due date would benefit from starting school a year later than those who were born at full-term.
However, a new paper published in the Journal of Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology contradicts these findings and claims starting school a year later does not lead to better academic performance for pre-term or full-term children and could in fact cause poorer academic performance as the children get older.
