When do children start school in the UK?

• Reception begins in the September after a child's fourth birthday. A

child born on 31 August 2022 starts in September 2026, at just four; a child born on 1 September 2022 starts in September 2027, at just five.

• Compulsory school age is later. A child must be in full-time education

from 31 December, 31 March or 31 August following their fifth birthday, whichever comes first, which is to say the start of the term after they turn five. In practice almost every child starts Reception at four.

• Independent schools set their own entry points. Many take children at

three into a nursery or pre-prep and at four into Reception; some start at seven. Their deadlines are their own and are often earlier.

You apply to your local council, not to the school, even where the school runs its own admissions. Applications open in September and close on 15 January of the year your child starts, and councils send offers on 16 April, or the next working day where that lands on a weekend or a bank holiday.

List several schools in order of preference. Naming only one does not improve your chances at it, and it leaves the council to place your child wherever there is room if that preference fails.

The same pattern as England. Reception begins in the September after the fourth birthday, and compulsory school age arrives on the same three dates, 31 December, 31 March or 31 August following the fifth birthday, whichever comes first.

Applications are through the local council, and the deadline is the council's own rather than a single national date, so check yours. A parent may also defer admission until the beginning of the term following the child's fifth birthday, provided that date still falls within the school year applied for. Many Welsh primaries offer part-time nursery places from three.

Children start Primary 1 in mid August. The intake is children who turn five between 1 March of that year and the last day of February the next, which means the youngest starters are four and a half and the oldest five and a half.

Put the other way round: a birthday between 1 March and 31 August means starting in the August of the year the child turns five, and a birthday between 1 September and the last day of February means starting in the August before they turn five.

Deferral is broader than most parents realise. Any child who is still four on the date they are due to start can defer for a year, not only those born in January and February. Since 1 August 2023, every child who defers on that basis is automatically entitled to an additional funded year of early learning and childcare. Before that date the automatic entitlement covered only children whose fifth birthday fell in January or February, and everyone else had to ask their education authority, which decided case by case. That change is the reason a deferral now costs a family nothing in childcare terms.

Applications are to the local council, usually in January.

Children start Primary 1 in September if they reach the age of four on or before 1 July of that year. A child who turns four between 2 July and 31 August waits, and starts in the September following their fifth birthday.

Northern Ireland is the only UK nation where compulsory education begins at four rather than five, so its children are legally required to be in school a year earlier than children elsewhere in the UK.

Deferral now exists, and is recent. The School Age (Northern Ireland) Act 2022 lets parents of "young for year" children, those born between 1 April and 1 July, defer the start of pre-school and primary school by one year. The child then starts in the September following their fifth birthday and is treated as part of the year group below. No educational assessment is required, and the deferral can be requested at any point before the child starts primary school.

Applications go through the Education Authority and open in January, with a deadline in late January and outcomes issued in March.

In England there are two entitlements running side by side.

• 15 hours a week for every three and four year old, regardless of income

or circumstances, from the term after the child's third birthday until they start school.

• 30 hours a week for eligible working parents, from the term after the

child turns nine months until they start school. This has covered the under-twos at the full 30 hours since 1 September 2025.

Both are funded for 38 weeks a year, matching the school year, and many settings let you spread the hours more thinly across more weeks.

One trap worth knowing: a nursery place at a primary school is applied for separately from Reception, and having the nursery place does not give you the Reception place. You apply again, through the council, on the same 15 January deadline as everybody else.

In England, yes, in three different ways, and they are worth separating.

1. Start part time, or later in the Reception year. You still apply at the

normal time and take up the place; you simply agree a later or lighter start with the school. The place must be taken up within that Reception year.

1. Delay a full year. A child can start the following September instead,

after they turn five. The catch that surprises parents is the default: a child arriving a year late normally goes into Year 1, not Reception, unless the admission authority agrees to admit them to Reception.

1. Summer-born admission to Reception a year late. Parents of children

born between 1 April and 31 August can ask for exactly that, a place in Reception in the September after the fifth birthday. The admission authority must decide on the individual circumstances of the case, so the request is considered rather than granted automatically, and it is worth making in writing and early.

Scotland is more generous: any child still four on the date they are due to start can defer, with a funded additional year of early learning and childcare since 1 August 2023.

Northern Ireland allows deferral for children born between 1 April and 1 July under the School Age (Northern Ireland) Act 2022.

1. Work out your child's intake year from their birthday and your nation.
2. Look at schools in the autumn before they start: most primaries hold open

mornings in October and November.

1. Apply to the council by 15 January in England, or by your council's or

authority's deadline elsewhere, listing several schools in order of preference.

1. Watch for the offer, 16 April in England, and accept it by the date in the

letter.

1. Expect a welcome pack, a settling-in schedule and a uniform list by email

in the summer term.

That last step is the one that catches people out. Settling-in days in September are often part-time and staggered, arriving as a PDF in a welcome email in July and needed in September, by which point the email is somewhere in a thread. Cyril reads the school's emails and calendar and puts those dates where both parents can see them, which is the point at which a staggered first fortnight stops being a logistics problem.