'I'm being told to delay my son's start at school, so I went and got the facts.'

My three-year-old son is due to start school in 2027. 

Well, actually, as he will proudly tell you, he's not three. He's three-and-a-half, because his birthday is in early February. And, actually, I thought he was due to start school in 2027.

Now I'm not so sure, because the closer I get to enrolment time, the louder the voices insisting that it's always more beneficial to delay school starts where possible. 

For anyone who isn't intimately involved in this discussion, let me zoom out a little.

While the laws vary from state to state, in New South Wales, where I live, there's a difference between when a child can start school and when they must start school.

Watch: Kindergarten kids describe their (hilarious) first days of school to their parents. Post continues below.

Kids can start school in the year they turn five, if they turn five before 31 July that year. They must start school in the year they turn six. What that means, in practice, is there can be up to 18 months of age difference in a single year group — a kid who turned six on 1 January could be the oldest child in a kindergarten class, while a kid who turned five on 30 July could be the youngest.

When I was at school, the oldest kids in my grade were late May birthdays. Anyone with birthdays earlier in the year was sent when they were four turning five. The prospect of someone turning 18 right at the beginning of year 12, in January or February, seems ludicrous to me, because it was never my experience. But I'm being told, over and over again, that my February-born son is likely to be one of the very youngest in his grade. 

Because I'm invested in this phenomenon, I decided to crowdsource a group of parents to see whether they'd noticed this trend too. The response? Overwhelmingly, parents of school-age kids told me that their belief, or their own experience, was that "you never regret an extra year of play". In other words: without even meeting your child, I can tell you that he'll benefit from starting school the year he turns six, rather than five.

That's the line I've heard many times before, in online parenting groups and in-person in my own parenting communities, so it didn't surprise me. 

What did surprise me is that, while almost 100 commenters proudly and publicly told me they had held back their kids and didn't regret it, something else was happening in the background. My DMs were full of the opposite story: parents who sent their kids in the first year they were allowed to attend school. Who didn't have regrets — who, in fact, by and large, had very good experiences — but who didn't feel comfortable saying so in public. 

One mum, Ella*, shared that the comments on my post lauding the benefits of delaying school starting age made her feel terrible about her own decision to send her April baby to school at four. 

"The guilt I feel reading those comments and knowing a lot of my decision was based on cost and convenience, whilst also believing my child was ready, was massive," she said. "That's despite my child absolutely thriving at school and having no issues being a year 'younger'. But I read these conversations and I keep waiting for the penny to drop where I'll suddenly understand why it was the wrong thing to send them early."

Ella's story drove home a theory I've been working towards too: for as much as we like to believe that these are decisions made in a vacuum, the truth is that keeping a child out of school —  either in paid childcare or home with a full-time caregiver — for an additional, optional year is a massive privilege. 

"The conversation is shrouded in so much shame and often fails to take into account that some family's situations do not allow kids to stay home an extra year," Ella told me. 

Another mum, Jessie*, told me she made the decision to send her children to school "early" because "daycare fees were killing our budget". In the long run, though, she's absolutely happy with her decision. She doesn't feel like her kids were left behind — on the contrary, "they're making wonderful academic and social achievements at school, despite being young for their year." 

That sentiment is echoed by Pia*, who takes issue with the oft-repeated phrase "another year of play". 

"It's making school sound like it's not designed for young kids, which is not the case — like 'put the shackles on, off you go to school'. But gosh, the joy in my son when he's learning!'". 

Another parent, Steph*, had a slightly more cynical take. 

"We all want the best for our children, but I think many parents are disingenuous when they say their child is not ready for school. Being older in the year confers academic advantage, at least in the early years of schooling."

But Jane*, a primary school teacher based in Sydney, where the practice seems particularly prevalent, said that academics aren't the only factor that parents need to be considering. 

"A lot of people focus on the academic side of starting school when in reality, school readiness depends a lot more on the child's social and emotional maturity, ability to settle into routines at school, and self-regulate. It's not about how they can count or how many letters they can identify — that's our job, and we will teach them those things when they start," she told Mamamia.

According to Jane, the "early" starters who struggle in the classroom are those who lack maturity. "It is a very individual thing. As much as people would love to be told simply that it's best to hold back or it's best to send, it is entirely a matter of assessing the individual child's social and emotional readiness. Holding a child back does not guarantee greater academic achievement — most of the time, if the child is ready for school, no matter their age, they will be fine." 

As useful as anecdotal evidence can be, there's nothing that helps break down an important decision like cold, hard facts. Firstly, how common is it, actually, for parents to hold their kids back — and is it my imagination, or is it happening more and more? 

Assuming a roughly even spread of birthdays through the year, we can guess that about 50 per cent of families have the option to delay their kids. In New South Wales in 2022, kids who were six in the year they started school made up 28 per cent of enrollments. That's a fairly substantial increase on 19 per cent in 2012, but it still only represents just over a quarter of students. 

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Looking at the performance of those students across a number of years, the data we have indicates that the benefits of delayed school entry are not significant when it comes to long-term academic success at school.

While most experts agree that we could use more robust data when it comes to assessing how delayed school starts affect performance, the best metrics we have tell us that there are no long-term benefits. Using NAPLAN scores as a metric, students in Year 3 who were held back received slightly higher NAPLAN results, but by Year 9, this advantage entirely disappeared. 

In the end, when your child should start school is an entirely personal decision. It will depend on all sorts of factors, with their social skills, academic performance and the school you're planning on sending them to being three of the main considerations. But in a world where "you'll never regret holding them back" seems to have become the dominant discourse, it's probably worth remembering – judging from the parents I spoke to – that you might not regret sending them, either.

Feature Image: Supplied.