Confused by call from school

Exactly

and the op can’t even “own” it. Comes up with some nonsense about a typo.

I feel for the school…. This op will be raging at them over something or another for years to come

Typo means you spell a word wrong not that you write an entirely different word. You’re trying to backtrack because some have said you are being unreasonable to be furious/livid/raging about something that’s in your DD’s best interests.

Surely the time to ask those questions was when someone rang you to discuss it? Remaining polite, but you could always call back, or pop in at drop off or collection time tomorrow:
"I was caught a bit off guard yesterday, but I have a few questions about why my daughter is being put in the small group. I hadn't been told last year that she was struggling in maths, have you identified something on the first day back? Is there anything I could be doing to support her learning in this area at home? Are there any concerns about her academic ability generally? You mentioned that the material will be the same, but taught more slowly, how will this benefitting her? Was there a criteria which has led to her being selected for this? Will she be missing anything else to allow for the teaching to be slower?"

FWIW, most schools wouldn't bother getting permission for your child to work in a smaller group with a teacher, so them giving you the heads up is good, and opens the door for you to further support at home.
It may be just a random sample of pupils for a comparative study, which may be why they've asked permission.

Maybe teacher was
meaning to say potential perhaps?

I'm raging about it, if she needs the help then I'm glad it's there for her

so what word did you mean to type out instead of raging but you kept missing the correct letters accidentally and “raging” was posted by mistake?

Do you understand what a “typo” is?

This poor school has another 4 years of this Op “raging” at…. Well their efforts to educate her daughter

I’m a teacher myself and would never give a group of children over to a TA and expect them to teach them every lesson (even with planning given by me) without me ever giving them input. This has happened in schools I’ve worked in. If they’re having input from me then having TA support during the independent work, fine, though again I would want to be working with them sometimes as I am the teacher. I stand by what I said - I wouldn’t want my child only ever taught maths by someone who is not a qualified teacher, and I believe it to be bad practice. This is what I was told on my teacher training many years ago and I still believe it to be true.

Some TAs are qualified, plenty aren’t. Some TAs are brilliant, some, I’m afraid to say, aren’t. (Of course, this is also true of teachers, though in my experience their performance is managed more carefully and they are accountable for the children’s results in a way TAs aren’t - and shouldn’t be.)

TAs are very qualified and should be fully briefed by the teacher for what they are expected to teach. In my experience the teacher will do the main input to the whole class and the TA would take smaller groups to go through the work and give extra support. Teachers and TAs have it hard enough without people like you saying it’s bad practice and the TA isn’t qualified

I was mildly annoyed that our school never informed me my kid was in a similar maths group (found out via my kid telling me herself).
After reading this....I fully understand why school just did it and never told parent(s).😂

This is what happened IMO

they couldn’t tell you in advance because hey might not be able to provide it and then they would be seen as lacking. I think this is why they gave you all the information about merging classes.

the Irish teacher above (can’t work out how to tag them) who said parents are fight for resource spots is dead right. The smaller the group the easier it is to learn for all children. In a small group you can make sure the core elements are understood before moving on to more complex work. In smaller groups kids can ask questions more easily… it is harder to switch off and day dream… they get a movement break getting to the resource class and back to the class room. So many benefits. Sorry if you said but I assume it is the same curriculum just smaller and slower?

You are raging about your child getting extra help at school. Seriously? You should be delighted. People seem to rage as the strangest things nowadays.

It's not to do with ability. It's to do with the child finding a particular area of maths-fractions, measurement etc trickier so the teacher is giving her an intervention to help. The pupil may find addition/subtraction/telling the time easier. Most schools don't even tell parents they're doing this-It's very common in schools and in my experience highly beneficial to the children. Also, composite classes are becoming more popular as pupil numbers are dwindling in certain year groups.

Hopefully though we’ve at least stopped the op “raging” and charging in to the school like a bull in a china shop!

You really think that’s how intervention works? Slotting random kids in because there’s a free space? Confused

10 isn't exactly a personalised intervention, it's a bit of small group work. certainly feasible they start with the group size they can accommodate then pick the kids they think will most benefit.

Our experiences would suggest don't take anything primary schools do personally if there's a possibility it's just logistics.

That's the piping though. They have only gone back today, there's no way she can have demonstrated any such thing & nothing was mentioned last school year.

@scorpiogirly it sounds most peculiar.

I had that all through primary school. They're called composite classes. Each group is taught at their appropriate level. If, like me, you worked at a higher level, then once you had done your set work you could try the higher level as well. At my school it was preschool+yr1, 2+3, 4+5, 6+7. It was a small school with around 100 children.

Composite classes are a way of keeping children of roughly the same age together. In a normal year,you have the possibility of the youngest being nearly a year younger than the oldest anyway, so even a single year class in Primary school is effectively a composite. In an official composite class, the younger pupils in the higher year are put with the older pupils in the lower year - that can make them much closer in age within the composite class. Schools do it so that class sizes are broadly the same, regardless of birthrate booms or busts.

What @scorpiogirly is describing sounds much more like setting for maths - which has been done in primary schools for at least 40 years. It sounds like they have decided to bring in another teacher/TA so that the groups are smaller. As there have been no messages from the school about DDs ability, they are probably setting by age.

One last thing - there are several levels of TA - many are qualified teachers themselves - and the highest level ones are both qualified and employed to take classes unsupervised, although the lesson plans may be checked by a teacher. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that children benefit greatly from setting, particularly in maths.

But the OP has been told ? She was told today, assuming that’s the first day it’s starting from?

Thank goodness you did not know. Your DD was able to do what holidays are for - relax!!

Look at the Y2 report as by law there needs to be some indication of where your child is and whether they meet age related expectations ARE
I’m surprised the school rang you as they don’t need your permission. I sent kids out for targeted group work all the time if I had an adult available.

speak to the teacher to find out what the concerns are.

I’m not reading through all the post so this might have already been said, so they will mix classes for various reasons. Maybe need to split up more challenging kids, classes will be similar the tables will be grouped in ability not the classes. They may have TA’s in some classes that are trained to do certain things medical so will put those kids together loads of reasons honestly lists endless.

speak to school and ask the teacher, it could be your child is just slower and needs to be speedier and that’s what they are working on, my daughter can read brilliantly but was slower than she needed be at one point, she struggles with spellings so I’m expecting her to possibly have some help there eventually.

Go and speak to her teacher and ask … pointless asking a bunch of strangers on here to guess 🤷🏻‍♀️