Mixed aged classes

[jammamia]

Hi there, I'm new to this, this being my first posting!

My son (is that ds, I may need some help with your shorthand!) age 5 has just finished Reception year and has started what should be year 1, in a mixed class of year 1 & 2. It's called 2xx and all activities (trips, plays, p.e etc) are done with year 2.

I wondered if anyone else had experience of mixed year group classes and what the pros and cons are, and anything I ought to look out for.

He is a very amenable little chap, having spent some time every week in nursery since he was 4 months old. He spent 2 days every week this summer hols in a "kids club" where most days he was the youngest with other children of up to 9 years old. I have said to his teacher you could put him in year 4 and he's happily sit there and try and do the best he could!

I had no real concerns about this, until tonight - the first parents evening - where a lot of parents were raising issues I hadn't even thought of - which has led me here!!

I would be very grateful for anyones opinions.
Thanks

[Ghosty]

Jemmamia ...
I would love to see what replies you get. I am in a similar situation although my DS has not yet started school (still got 14 months to go). Composite Year Groups (as they like to call them) are very popular in NZ and both the local primary schools have them. Both Headteachers rave about them and say that it helps the younger children to be extended. The way some schools work it here is that they put older Yr 1 children with younger Yr2 - which isn't too bad .....
One of the schools has a class of Yr 4,5 and 6 together and apparently 'it works' really well.
As an ex-primary school teacher I couldn't imagine anything worse than teaching 30 children that range from just 5 (very young Yr 1) to almost 8 (old year 2) so the idea as a parent is not that appealing ...
Hope someone has something positive to say ....

[Gem13]

I work in educational research (but keep it quiet!) and have looked into mixed age classes as part of my work.

To sum up the main findings, children don't do any worse educationally than those in single age classes and they gain more social skills than those in single age classes. It seems that the older ones set a good example to the younger ones and take on this responsibility and the younger children try to fit in with the older ones.

Basically the general answer is that it's good for the children.

The main problem (in the UK, don't know about other countries) is the stress it places on teachers. This is because the curriculum is now so prescriptive they have to teach X to year 1 and X to year 2. However, some teachers have argued that in a single age class they can have children who are academically 2 years or more apart even though the spread is only 12 months and they have to cope with these sort of differences anyway. The other main problem is when the mixed age classes cross the Key Stages which won't be the case for your DS.

I'm sure the teachers will be on the lookout for those who are charging ahead/struggling.

It sounds as if your DS will be in his element!

[vkr]

Many many years agao I was taught in a school of 50 pupils which covered infant and juniors - as a result we had 2.5 classes - ie 1 part time teacher for some of the kids some of the week. It worked brilliantly as the teachers made sure we were all doing say maths at the same time, but working at our own level - not that of each other. I don't know whether this would now work given the National Curriculum - I do feel for the teachers with this, but what is so different about this from a mixed ability class at a secondary school ?

[FairyMum]

Isn't this the way they organise classes in Montessori schools? Don't know much about Montessori, but thought part of their methods of teaching is based on mixed aged classes?

[janh]

Hi, jammamia. The school all my kids have been through do this for most years - only Reception and the youngest Y1s are on their own.

It seems to work perfectly well - they've been doing it for a long time so even with the prescriptive curriculum mentioned by Gem everything seems to slot together, and the school does fine in performance tables etc. (Mind you it has a lot of bright kids.)

My only problem with it is that they divide purely by age, which means that for most of their school career the younger children in a year are with the year below, and never have the chance to be lifted/pulled along by the year above - this applies to behaviour as well as learning.

The division has to be by age, not ability, for the sake of "fairness" - ie parents would argue about it otherwise!

It sounds as if your DS will get along fine in his mixed class and, as Gem says, the teacher should be able to deal with all levels of ability.

[GillW]

In my infant school days (we're talking 30+ years ago, so way before the National Curriculum) I went to a village school which although there were enough classes to have done so didn't operate a strict class by age policy. It simply meant that the classes were organised by the level the pupils were at, rather than simply by age.

I'm sure that some of you will disagree with what seems a bit like selection at primary level - though I don't recall it ever being an issue there at the time. However it probably did have the effect of keeping the ability/standard range within bounds (i.e. the opposite effect to simply saying year 1 and year 2 are together as a mixed age group.) making it easier for the teachers rather than harder.

On the basis of that experience (and of a very boring two years spent repeating things I'd already done when we moved and I went to a school with more conventional age-based classes) I'd be quite happy to send my ds to a school with a similar approach.

Funnily enough the nursery ds goes to now operates a fairly similar policy, with the groups not being strictly organised by age but by what the children are ready for (e.g. he moved to the group which is mostly 2+ at 20 months) and I'm more than happy with that.

But mixed age groups, simply saying year X and year Y are taught together could be a whole different scenario. As a start of September baby ds is already going to be the oldest in his "year" when he starts school, and if he continues to be ahead of his age in development is likely to be towards the extreme end of the range of abilities in a class in the early years. So on one hand being in with the group in the year above some of the time could benefit him, but every other year he would be taught with children chronologically almost 2 whole years younger, developmentally maybe more.

One of our options for ds is a small village school where the children are taught in multiyear classes. It?s a nice school, and gets good results and part of me says that it?s where I?d like him to go. But another part instinctively feels that it?s a system which will inevitably work better for children in the middle of the age range in a year who aren?t as likely to be the ones at extremes of the inevitably extended age/standard range.

[suedonim]

My two dd's have been in mixed classes, covering P1 to P4 and then P5 to P7. It works wonderfully well and the children are all so happy. The class are very small, only about 14 in each, (in Scotland composite classes have a max of 25 pupils) so the teachers teach to ability rather than in rigid year groups. My younger dd is 7, and this week she's been helped with her work by a 9yo and then she herself was explaining words in a 5yo's reading book. To me, it seems more natural to put children of mixed ages together, they can all benefit from being around younger/older children.

[robinw]

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[mrsforgetful]

My 3 boys attend a 'stretched' school where every class has the max its allowed, and last year my Autistic ds1 was in a yr4 class of 37!

last year my ds2 was in yr1 and i wasn't happy that there were 10 reception kids there- it worked out fine though! He's bright and works well independantly.

This year my ds3 has just joined a mixed reception/yr 1 class....15 of each-will see how things go- he's tiny and less 'focused'...so really i suppose as long as he's happy and progresses then ,as is often the case, i will have to accept that 'the parents don't like it...but its the results that count!

[M2T]

HI jammamia!

I was in a mixed class for 3 years whilst at Primary School in Scotland (infant school in England??).

It started in Primary 5 when I was 8 or 9 yrs old. There were 10 of us put into a Primary 4 class. This carried on until we left for High School. I worked out fine and I quite enjoyed it, it was different and unusual and that was great.

Our education never suffered at all. In fact 2 of that 10 are now GP's.

And I turned out okay too (debatable).

[jammamia]

I am so pleased with all these responses! This board is a fabulous thing.

The school my ds is in is actually quite a large one (well relatively for Dorset!), and the reason for this mixed class is to cut down on class sizes. By taking 4 children from 6 classes (3 year 1 classes and 3 year 2 classes), the average class size was taken from 28 to 24.

I'm going in to "help" for 2 hours tomorrow afternoon, hoping it will give me more of a feel for the situation and help understand a little more how it works.

I am so impressed with the speed and depth of responses - thank you all very much!
J