Suspension in boarding schools

[Geoff]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince" <catlady at ...> wrote:
>
> Geoff wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/40284>:
> 
> << Indeed it is true of all English schools that keeping someone back a year is unheard of. Educational regulations specify the age at which a pupil must be to enter a given school year. >>
> 
> Brian replied in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/40285>:
> 
> << However it doesn't stop pupils from being advanced a year.  It happened to me. >>
> 
> I don't understand. I understood Geoff to say that the regulation requires that a pupil must turn 5 on or before September 1 to enter Kindergarten, and so on for each grade (American terminology). Meaning that someone like Hermione, with birthday on September 19, entered First Year very shortly before her 12th birthday. If anyone ever deserved to skip a year, it's Hermione. But the regulation that I thought Geoff mentioned would prevent her from being skipped unless she was somehow able to change her birthday from Sept 19 to Sept 1.

Geoff:
I think I wasn't totally clear here. I was speaking in the context of 
someone being held back to repeat a year. There are situations where a 
pupil might be allowed to advance a year (as Brian has suggested) but it 
would normally only happen at secondary school level and would perhaps 
be a child who was exceptionally bright - the sort of child who takes an 
Oxford entry exam at 14; such elevated minds do exist!

Also, just for clarification, I did not say that the regulation was "on or 
before 1st September"; I referred to the 31st August/1st September 
cut-off date; in other words the regulation is "before 1st September".