A quarter of NSW children are starting school a year later than they are eligible, and the delay is helping them fare better in kindergarten than their younger peers, a landmark study has found.
The University of NSW-led study of 100,000 children is the largest to look at kindergarten starting age in NSW, which has the highest rates of school delay in the country, and the first to compare it with developmental data.
The study looked at student data from 2009 and 2012. It found that if parents were able to choose whether to send or delay - if their child turned five between January and July - half decided to delay. In NSW, an average of 25 per cent of children had a delayed start to school, well ahead of Victoria, at 10 per cent. The highest rates of delay were in parts of regional NSW; between 45 and 55 per cent delayed their child's start to school in Coonamble, Cowra and Gloucester.Jessica Hromas
It posed questions for policy-makers, he said. "It's real social patterning," he said. "The parents who are not delaying their kids are Indigenous, kids who haven't gone to pre-school before, whose mothers were born in Asia and the Middle East.
JordsBaker 6 year olds are more developed on average than 4.5 year olds? No sh1t, Sherlock 🙄
JordsBaker Given the option I would never have gone to school. A total waste of time.