Primary school deferral statistics: FOI release

Information requested

What % of children born in August 2020 to February 2021 cohort were deferred from starting primary 1 in August 2025 to instead begin in Aug 2026? I would also like to know the deferral rates from 2023 onwards.

Response

We do not hold the information that you are looking for. However, the Scottish Government does publish the number of child registrations and percentage of those eligible for deferral who take up this offer and remain in funded Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) for an additional year based on results from the annual ELC census. A time series of this data is available at national level in Table 3 of the Funded Early Learning and Childcare Statistics 2025 additional tables, and table 4 contains the data at local authority level for 2025. A time series at local authority level of uptake figures is also available at the same link.
Please refer to the notes under the table on how the eligible population is calculated, and things to consider when looking at the uptake rates.

We do not hold information on the cost of deferrals specifically. Using estimated cost data from the Coram 2025 Childcare Survey for three and four year olds and registrations for deferrals in the 2025 Early Learning and Childcare census, we would estimate the total cost for all deferrals in 2025 to be around £50 million. However, it is not possible to quantify the extra cost due to the change in legislation as we do not hold information on the date of birth of the children who deferred and therefore we cannot identify children who would not have been eligible prior to the legislation change.

The total cost is estimated as the product of i) 8,630 children registrations who deferred entry from the 2025 census published on 9 December (collected in September 2025) and ii) the reported cost for 1140 entitlement 50 hours a week (paying for 20 hours, 30 hours at no extra cost) of nursery childcare for three and four year olds in Scotland is around £6,000 per year; using Coram 2025 Childcare Survey (Collected between November 2024 to February 2025). This figure is used as an estimate for the reported cost for deferrals because we do not hold any information on the cost per place for a deferral.

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