Mixed age classes in primary

[MsMarvellous]

My kids go to a small rural primary and we've just had an email home to say that the school will be moving to mixed age classes from next year so that we can financially stay afloat.

I just wondered who has had experience of their child going into a mixed class from a traditional year group class and how it has worked.

My gut reaction was "argh no" but I'm wondering if there could be lots of positives here.

When I started school, over fifty years ago, it was a time of a very high birth rate. I went to a two form entry primary school and there were generally between 35 and 40 children per class. No TAs then either. In my early years at school, mixed age groups were the norm. My birthday is in December and I was a high achiever. I thrived being with the youngest children of the year above, although I would imagine that teaching was probably more formal in those days.

I went to a school with mixed classes. I don't remember that part of it being a problem but seeing my kids go to a three form entry primary school now they have so much more available to them than we had. Our school was small and in a rural backwater with 3 teachers - one good, one fine and one awful old dragon, and it really did me no favours. I wouldn't choose such a restricted environment personally.

Our school has some composite classes and an average 2.5 classes per year group.

I went to a much smaller school with about .75 of a class per year. It was composite most years with the groupings changed each year.
I’ve not found any problems yet. To be honest with only two years combined I’m not sure it’s all that different than the natural spread in one year. The outliers at both ends will be a bit further apart but mostly two consecutive year groups will overlap in ability.

The school dc's are at turns into mixed ages half way through, from year 3. It's an outstanding school with a great reputation and does very well academically (as far as a primary can) the school is great and hands on, supportive, love the teachers, but I'm really unsure about this.

We're keeping ds (going into a mix year 3/4 class) in from September but will be looking at local private schools as an alternative. 3 have already left this year to go private anticipating the mix classes, and 3 years ago 15 children left 1 class a year into the mixed classes as it wasn't working for them apparently.

@boymum9 I don't really have a lot of choice. I can't afford private and all the other schools near us are mixed class anyway.

I'm frustrated as we moved here 18 months ago and chose the school in part because of the single form year groups. Doesn't help school just sent a letter saying it was done. No discussion and not a meeting to ask questions.

I'm otherwise really happy with the school though so need to stick my positive head on for now!

I did my teacher training in rural Norfolk. My last placement I was teaching all of KS2. That was a LOT as a student.

We had this when I was in primary. There were 6 classes of years 3 and 4 together and 6 of years 5 and 6 together.

Both schools mine have gone to have had mixed years. I think it’s great. They get to know older/younger students, and they have the same teacher for 2 years so teachers get to know them really well.

@Suddha but it's primary school, they don't teach in set subject blocks so they're not ignoring half the class at a time?

DD's school has Reception, Y1 and Y2 doing the same topic each half term. The topics rotate over three years so no kid does the same topic twice. They then do teaching activities within that topic - so this half term they're doing 'seaside' (which includes fossils and therefore dinosaurs!) and one morning last week they did a writing exercise based on shells. The Y1s had some tricky words to help them and a different focus, the Y2s had a harder writing exercise. Then they all did some shell artwork. The reading books/library books on each topic are similarly graded. There will be a range of ability within a year class anyway - at this school it sounds like a TA is always with the table that is younger and possibly needs more support. There will be some overlap between the higher ability Y1s and lower ability Y2s as well.

"I went to a very small village school that had 2 classes, infants and juniors"

Yes, same here and when I moved at the end of standard 1 I went into a class just for standard 2 and felt quite advanced in some ways. The smallness of the school probably helped as well.