Mixing classes every year - potential for long term harm?

As a teacher (Y3) I can say there isn't much time in class in most schools for friendships to be made. We sit children next to partners who are unlikely to be their friends; they would certainly never get to choose where they sit. The children make their friends at playtime and lunchtimes; in class they are working.

My children's 2-form entry primary school splits the children in reception by birthday - so one half of the year has the children with birthdays from September to February (say) and the other has the March (ish) to August birthdays. They stay in these classes until year 4.

The classes are mixed for years 5 and 6, primarily so they can get to know more of their comrades before moving to secondary. When the classes are mixed a deal of effort is taken to ask pupils who they want to be with - and to elicit input from parents. There is a lot of respect for not breaking up friendships where this would be harmful.

It's not perfect, but the more I hear about how other schools do this, the better my opinion of this school becomes!

Not all neurodivergent kids.

I was fine with it, as were both of my brothers. I imagine it would not necessarily be an issue for many people with adhd or other neurodivergences but I can imagine it would be difficult for many people with asd.

Mine are at a large ish school where they have about 14 smaller classes, all mixed. So they are all R/Y1 Y1/Y2 etc… it gets a bit complicated.

there are pros:

• my eldest is born in Sept but also has dyslexia. The teachers have been brilliant at adapting work simply because they do it all the time for the varying ages in their classes. He has been able to work to his age group or stick to the basics with the younger students
• likewise my friends daughter who is younger but very clever was able to work with the older students in the class when she needed more challenging.
• you don’t get the same shit every year - DS was having problems with another child and they could easily separate them into different classes. Definitely keeps things more harmonious (as can be at primary!)

cons:

• I sometimes think the younger ones can be held to unnecessarily high standards: I also have an August born ND DS who was being reprimanded for behaviour that is age appropriate IMO. For swinging his legs sitting in church for example.
• it can get confusing and also the age gaps can be HUGE. My 7yo is in a Y1/2 class and my 4yo is in a R/Y1 class so despite being three years apart they have kids the same ages in both their classes which I find insane.

Mixing classes up is really damaging for neurodivergent children.

Girls can be like that even if they are together in the same class turn from best friends to worse enemies and back again within a day.

I thought you meant mixed as in having uneven year groups so some children would be in mixed year 5/6, 4/5, 3/4 etc and others may be just their own year group. It is a total disaster especially if your child is year 6 with a load of year 5 kids.

But then, so are you. The fact is, kids are different. Neurodivergent kids in particular have difficulty forming friendships, and what few they can form are often held on to for a long time. The alternative is loneliness and bullying. You want to talk about healthy?

In my case, my kid has been separated from their best friend for a few years now. So I'm being forced to arrange "play dates" with that best friend where they can freely bond over a shared love of cats and Roblox, offering some respite from her current "friends" who just go on and on about self-harm and worse. Her current class is so stressful to her that she just doesn't want to go to school anymore.

I wish parents had more say in whether or not their kids mix. We know our kids best.

I don't live in the UK, and mixing classes every year is the norm (unless you live in a tiny rural area with few students I guess). I couldn't imagine anything more boring than being stuck with the same group of children every day for 6-7 years, no matter how well you got along. And if you didn't get along, it would be an absolute nightmare, and possibly quite damaging.

As for "needing" to stay in the same class in order to keep friendships strong - utter rubbish. One of my DC was part of a tight threesome during primary. They were placed in various class combinations through school and still retained that friendship.

Another DC met his best friend in the last term of preschool. They could go years without being in the same class. 20ish years later, my DC is going to be best man to his friend at his wedding next month.

Composites are quite normal too, and in my experience, a lot of thought goes into placing the children in those classes. My kids thrived in them, despite my own initial doubts.

Ex teacher in a very small primary, each Yr, depending on how many in a Yr group, different classes were formed ie I could have yrs 234, following Year Yrs 23.
However in larger schools ie one or two full classes per Yr, I've never known them mix classes up unless there were issues between the children that required separation ie conflicts/behavioural.
Seems some schools must do this regularly, but honestly not something I've known in 20+yrs .

I think a large part of it is down to personality. I had composite classes for 2 years in an English primary school in the 90s. I still played with friends at breaktime and made new friends in my class. I'm not the greatest at keeping in contact with people, more a believer that friends get you through a period of your life and then you move on. I have started using Facebook recently and reached out to my best friend from high school. I do admit that my first few days of high school were lonely though. None of my friends went to my high-school so I was on my own at lunch and break times until I made friends but as someone who is naturally shy it took a lot of effort.

My dd1 was in a composite class in p1 and then not in p2. She does find it hard with friendships (very happy with her own company, shy) so we've asked school for help and I've worked on her self confidence and she's much better at asking people to play and showing an interest in others. We also facilitate play dates so she can get to know other kids on a 1 to 1 which she is comfortable with.My son was in a composite class in p1 and will be again in p2. I'm not sure if his best friend will be in his new clas and I rather hope not as it would hopefully encourage him to make other friendships.

There was no reason you couldn't have kept in touch with friends from highs chool, college or uni. You really have put the effort in if you want to maintain friendships or stay in touch at the very least. It's not too late to reach out to people and with social media it's really not that difficult to reconnect. Take the plunge.

I rather like the way my children's school does it. Two classes per year. Children stay in the same classes from Reception to Year 4, based on birthdate (so all the older kids together, younger kids likewise). Then they mix the classes round for Y5 and Y6 so they can get to know more people before they're all flung into the vast melting pot of secondary school.

We had same last year. After a really challenging few months he has made another friend thankfully who is in his class this year.

For me there are children who are fine with mixing classes and presumably would be fine with not because they have an ability to socialise/make friends. Then there are those for whom it's a massive struggle every year. And they are given no consideration whatsoever. Just told it's good for them.

Some children have a tendency to become extremely and obsessively attached to their friends. They can become stifling and uncomfortable for the other child.
There are so many reasons why it’s a good idea for schools who have the opportunity to mix up their classes.

Regularly mixing up class groups is rarely in the best interests of the children. It’s about the convenience of the school and teachers. In my experience they want to have a similarly able group of kids together to make teaching the content easier. Or they want to break up certain friendships to make the class easier to ‘control’. The friendships of more mature or quieter children are usually just collateral damage. My poor brother was a particularly calm, easygoing kid and every year he was sat next to an extremely disruptive child in the seating plan.

I think therapy could be helpful. That level of memory about primary school classes/friendships is not healthy and quite unusual. I agree that mixing things up is good for kids and that intense friendships rarely are. I don’t think this has caused your MH issues/adult anxiety, I think whatever underlies these things has led to you overanalysing childhood happenings and trying to find a reason for how you are now. I don’t think it’s class mixing at primary and I think therapy might help you find out the underlying reasons for your current anxieties. I’m Uber anxious too and there are really good historical/family reasons why, therapy can be scary but I hope you do it and find some peace.

I’m similar to you OP in that I have always been a shy, quiet, anxious type and add to that I looked different and my parents were from outside the area so I sounded “posh” to the other kids.

My mum kept moving me to different primary schools for petty reasons like she thought a teacher had slighted her, so I went to three different primary schools and I always did and still do find it difficult to make friends and sustain friendships and like you would have one intense friendship at a time and to be honest I don’t think I’ll ever forgive her for it, I can remember being very upset about being bullied as a teenager and saying “I’ve got no friends” and my mum saying “what do you want friends for, you don’t need friends”.

My primary never mixed classes. I found it hard to make friends in secondary school because I had limited experience of making new friends so it swings both ways.

My dc went to a five form entry primary and the classes were mixed every year. Nobody seemed to take any notice whatsoever of who went where.

My dc are confident and happy older teens who are sociable. They have friends and can make friends.

I can see where you are coming from, but on the other hand, my dd's school managed not only to put her bully in the same class as her for three years on the trot, but also put them in small dorms together on two different residential school trips, despite us repeatedly asking them not to do so.

Personally I think it's more healthy to split up so that they get used to different people and don't become over-reliant on a very small number of "friends".

When I was at primary, there were 9 classes, so you "jumped" a class in infants and again in juniors, so your "friend circle" was spread over 3 different years. My son's primary had 10 classes, so they jumped once in infants and twice in juniors. I was fine with that, son was fine with that, we made loads of friends across different years and here were far fewer "cliques".

DS was the only child from his primary school in his secondary school form, and we were very worried, but it was absolutely fine. Lots of others were the same (it had a very large catchment area fed into it from around 20 primaries!), so they all mixed together well (again, few fixed friendships from the same primary in the same class).

I think throwing lots of people without "friends" in together actually works better as there's no "baggage" from the previous year, and by that I mean "good" baggage in terms of friends nor "bad" baggage in terms of bullying etc.

Having to make new friends, meet new people, work with new people, etc builds resilience, and that's a very good thing.

My daughter is on the asd pathway and she really struggles with the moving around of kids and classes each year.
This year she's been split from her only friend 😩

My dd Is in mixed groups and it works so well. She friendly with everyone and enjoy s meeting new people and keeping old. I explained mummy just just have one friend but lots and like everyone else in the school we encouraging this. One child seems to have best friend but lots of friends which I think it better. Sorry you had such a bad time at school

We have constant mixing and shuffling of people throughout life. Children will get used to it.

It's an unpopular view currently, but I agree with you.

My dc were at a large juniors that mixed them up every year.
Before the move they had to write down 10 people from their form they were happy to be with. So 1/3 of their form. Let's be honest, most people probably had maximum of 5 they would really want to be with, about 5 they really didn't want to be with, and about 20 they were fairly indifferent.
Even with that number one of mine twice (out of 3 time mixed up) was with no one she'd asked to be with-and some she'd asked for had asked for her too - the teacher confirmed it, and said there was no problems with them being together, just "we can't always fix it so everyone gets what they want".

They'd tell you cheerfully that it didn't matter because they could still play together whenever they want to.
Except PE/school trips, even the residential, they weren't allowed to mix across forms, so things with partners they were separated. And break times were staggered, so they didn't always share a break and lunch times they went into lunch in forms, so a good proportion of lunch time they were queueing up/in lunch or their friend was.

And what happened was when they were sorting out the forms around Easter time, those who were loud and had obvious friends were put together and those who were quieter and less noticeable weren't.
So typically those who found making friends easy, and were loud about friendships, stayed with friends, but those who found it harder were split from any friends they'd made.
By year 5 some of them had given up hope of making friends because they felt that there was no point, because they'd be split up again. The confident ones just added more confident ones to their group.
It had the opposite effect to what you'd want.

Because they could only request children from their form, once they were split from their friend, there was no way of requesting they were together again.

I'm not against the idea of mixing when the year generally benefits from it, like where there are very different form make-ups, but I don't think doing it every year whatever is detrimental to forming relationships.