Denmark: Boys and bilingual kids begin school late

The article uses the term "bilingual kids", but I did not understand whether this means real bilingual kids - ie, kids who speak two languages at home, or kids who speak one language at home and will pick the majority society language when they're outside.

The statistics are a bit confusing in this article since they talk about two groups which overlap - boys and bilingual kids. However, while 93.1% of kids start school on time, only 3.5% of bilingual kids do so.

An increasing number of boys and bilingual children break government regulations by being kept out of school until after they reach the age of five.

The Socialist People's Party (SF) and the preschool teachers' union BUPL are warning the government against trying to push children to start school earlier.

Their warnings come on the heels of a study by the IT Centre for Education and Research that finds that 16.9 percent of parents choose to wait a year before starting their children in school.

Nearly twice as many boys started later than girls, and bilingual children weighed heavily in the statistics, though some 3.5 percent of bilingual children did start before the age of five.

A lot of parents postpone their children's start in schoolm, so the children¿are better prepared to start learning, according to Pedersen, the president of BUPL.

The minister of education, Bertel Haarder, called the trend 'worrisome' and called on parents not to delay their children's school start.

Compared with other countries, such as England, Danish children start school relatively late, staying in¿day-care centres¿until the age of five and beginning in kindergarten at six.

Source: Jyllands-posten (English)

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