Research published by the Department for Education shows that the number of requests to defer a school start rose by 84 per cent between 2015 and 2017.
Among the local authorities surveyed, 916 requests were received to delay school entry from 2015-16 to 2016-17. A year later, 1750 requests to delay school entry were received by the same number of local authorities, equivalent to 0.5 per cent of the five-year-old population.
In both periods, 75 per cent of requests were granted.
The research says that as this trend is based on data from a relatively short period, just two years, it is not possible to predict whether this rate of increase is likely to continue.
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