Mixing classes every year - potential for long term harm?

Mixing classes up every year feels like overkill to me. I remember the classes being mixed up twice throughout my entire time at primary school. Same for my children at their school.

I think it depends where you grow up. I grew up in a small Welsh town and I have the same best friends years later. We have other friends and I’ve moved 250 miles away but if I needed them tomorrow they’d be here. Many people seem to have the same friendship groups (I see the photos on FB on them with their old school besties and now their own children). It’s that kind of place. Here in South London / Surrey border it’s not the same

As somebody who works in a small school where children are stuck with each other in a cohort of around 12 children all the way up primary school, I would argue that's often worse.

It cuts many ways.
My (huge, 8 form entry) primary school mixed up classes every year. It was always a relief not to end up in the same class as the girl who bullied me.
The DC went to a 1 form entry rural primary school. DD's class was very boy heavy and she didn't really gel with many of girls. When her best female friend left, the nonchalance of the others turned to bullying, and DD had nowhere to go.

I always wondered about the value in doing this given my best friends now at 47 are the same friends I met in reception. One was in the other class and we became more friendly in year 6, but the others because we were in the same class all those years. My son has the same friends from primary, but my DD doesn’t, and her classes were changed a lot. She’s also pretty shy, so probably why she’s not got the same friends, but I do think it doesn’t help children like her who aren’t the most confident. DS would have coped easily as he’s quite outgoing like his Dad and I, but DD is chronically shy. Thankfully she does have a small group of friends at school (she’s year 11 in Sep) but they aren’t from her primary school

I have got absolutely no idea what happened with my classes in primary school. I have never given it a single thought until reading this thread. I moved at the end of Y6 and have never seen anyone from primary school again. It has had no impact on my life whatsoever... I wonder if you might struggle with friendships more generally and be projecting your primary experience onto this, rather than the primary experience being the cause?

I went to a two class entry primary and never swapped classes. I make friends slowly and prefer small groups. I didn't really fit in to my class but did have a few best friends until y6 when they ditched me and I had no friends.

I think I'd have hated class swapping (although I suppose it might have helped in y6) so I don't think I'd be keen on it for dc. But as pp prove, what works well for some children doesn't work for others. I wonder if there are studies showing whether one is better than the other in general.

I deliberately went to a senior school where I knew no one as a new start. No class streaming or swapping there until y10 and it was great for me.

They're pretty common in small, rural schools in England. Our rural primary had composite classes up until years 5/6.

I think in Scotland you are guaranteed your catchment school so schools cannot control their intake like they can in England where you can be allocated a different primary school to the one you applied for of the school is full, hence composite is much more common.

I think composite is fine for the majority of pupils, but for some it is deeply, deeply damaging. Those with anxiety and socialisation difficulties such as asd can really suffer with serious mental health implications. When this happened to my child what I found so infuriating was the attitude of the Head teacher. Total disregard of our lived experience of the damage it was doing to my child. Claims that it would ‘build resilience’ and that most children found composure classes fine so we were clearly just making up the way that my previously happy child cried themselves to sleep each and every night about this for months and months. I get that to some extent occasionally head teachers need to say no in some situations but not when continuing to do so actively harms a child.

Thanks - that makes sense! Most of the discussions I've had around schools since living down here have been either in the context of kids going to school in the city we live in, or with people who went to school in the area, so that probably explains why it hasn't come up.

On an only semi-connected note I've just Googled as never heard anyone in England mention composites before - seems like maybe they're a Scottish thing?

It genuinely hadn't occurred to me until this thread that some people have the exact same set of classmates all through primary school. The school I went to had one and a half classes per year so we had one full class per age group and then a composite class. I suspect that they didn't want the same kids being in the composite every year (both for the sake of fairness in learning and because this would've been a smaller group of peers) so there was shuffling about every year. It was always disappointing when your closest friends were in the other class but you still saw one another at lunch, plus you knew that you would potentially be shuffled back together the following year.

Coming from a teacher, I wish we didn't mix classes by default. Sometimes there's a very good reason for it (unbalanced needs/behaviour/friendship issues across a cohort, for example) but I disagree with doing it every year for the sake of it. It's hard for children who are shy or anxious, or those separated from their friends for whatever reason. Sometimes the new classes turn out less balanced than before as on paper it can look very different from reality.

My DCs' primary is single-form intake with no room to jiggle changes of combinations. If you're lucky to be in a class with a pleasant, compatible combination of children and find other people you click with that's great. Some class combinations are just hard work and fractious. Some have tight friendship groups that don't shift and that leaves some children on the periphery for years.

I went to two different primary schools. One re-jigged the classes each year. The other tended to keep the same combinations but did end up changing them y5-6 in my year as multiple friendship issues sprang up and needed breaking up and diluting. Y6 was far more settled after that.

There is room for being sensitive in managing friendship combinations and not constantly breaking up the same childrens' friendships, but in a socially healthy child, changing class combinations shouldn't have a lasting impact. Also not fitting with one class for 7 years can also be damaging.

At secondary, combinations are regularly broken up into different set combinations by different subjects.

Extra curriculars are also important for socialising beyond the contraints of school classes, either for expanding beyond a limited range or for a few years of stability if classes change.

i can say in my case myself and my bf were very naughty together we would have a year together then be split when they remembered we aren’t a good mix . We are now in touch 30 years later and she is godmother to my Ds..

my own Ds in primary he had to put 3 people he would like to be with one ( they worded as) who you don’t work well with . He is just leaving high school still best mates with friends from year 1..

How do you know about that happening? I have zero memories of primary school. Children need to learn resilience

My kids have the other issue, they don't mix classes, which can lead to its issues with friendships and when there are children with challenging behaviours or unmet extra needs.

I'm also pro-mixing as I went to a small village primary school and had a nice but also very intense and jealous best friend, when she left our school around year 4 I missed her but was also so relieved to finally be able to have other friends. My mum said later that she'd already thought about moving schools, it was that extreme.

Last time we spoke a few years ago, my old friend talked about how it was so awful that she and I got split up like this, even when I tried to gently challenge her on it. She's so lovely but still finds social cues and this kind of empathy hard, and I wonder if there's any similarity there for you, OP - it could well be that you didn't get moved with friends because they were thoughtless (the 'award' certainly was horrible), but it could also be because sometimes very intense best friend relationships at this age aren't quite equal or necessarily healthy for the children involved and their social development.

It may be that your social challenges at a younger age were the foreshadowing of these issues at an older age, not a cause. In either case though, you sound lovely and reflective and shouldn't have to suffer what you are now - have you ever had counselling about these issues?

I'm sorry you struggled, but I actually don't think it's very healthy for small children to be completely inseparable from each other.

Children should have a variety of different friends and it's normal (and healthy) for those friendships to change as you grow up and go through the school system. Changing classes around allows children to meet new people and make new friends.

I went to a two form entry school in the 80s and no one ever moved class.

I hated it when we went to high school; all classes were grouped alphabetically by surname. Most of the girls I’d gone to school with and were close to had, unluckily for me, surnames in the top quarter of the alphabet while mine was P. I was with no one I knew, apart from in form time. It was better for the 4 lessons we were put in sets for, as that was by ability.

I think it could be a non issue given the right personalities and circumstances but for some it’s detrimental.
For my daughter, the most damaging time was her nursery year from age 3. The school merged nursery and reception that year as a cost cutting exercise. The lovely nursery was repurposed and she was in a prefab with multiple classes of mixed nursery and reception classes. The nurture and home from home setting was missing. All the way through the primary years it yo you’d from her bring the oldest to the youngest in the class. For her it had consequences that as a 17 year old she lives with still.
I sometimes feel so angry that the school didn’t care enough about the effect of their decisions on the children. Not long after my daughter left reception, they reverted back to the nursery setting because it was better for the children.

I'm not sure keeping children with a single best friend year after year is that great either (which is presumably what you would have preferred). It's pretty unusual to stay friends with the same people across your whole school lifetime.

Maybe look at your experience from the other perspective - if you're the child in the class with no friends, wouldn't you quite like the classes to be mixed up to give you a chance of making a new one in the following year?