Stick with me, I may go on a bit!
Ds is currently in reception, he's just 5 so one of the younger ones.
In his class there are 23 children, quite a few have SEN and several have behaviour problems. He has struggled to make friends, there are only a few girls and they want to play together and the boys play too rough for ds. He now has one close friend and about five other friends who are mainly girls.
Across reception there are 45 children so not enough for two classes when they go up to ks1. What the school do is is have one year one class, a mixed 1/2 class and a year 2 class with 30 in each.
Apparently this year they are looking at the children's emotional maturity and putting the emotionally mature year 1s in with the less mature year 2s.
Ds has been put in the year 1 class with his closest friend but the other children he likes (and who he is in the same reading / writing / maths groups with) have gone into the year 1/2 mix.
I am concerned that he will be held back because consequently at least half his class this september will have behaviour problems and / or SEN. Although I'm not really concerned about the SEN more that 15 or so children will have behaviour problems and be disruptive. The better behaved more able children are in the 1/2 mix. I suspect ds is probably slightly above average in ability but his behaviour is excellent. He is easily capable of sitting and listening and following instructions and is apparently very self motivated.
He has found the behaviour of a lot of his classmates this year difficult and next year it looks like it will be worse because the calmer children will have gone and there will also be children from the other class who have behaviour problems.
I'm also concerned that the gap between those in the 1/2 class and those in the year 1 class will get wider. I appreciate the less mature year 2s will be in there but they will still be further on than the less mature year 1s.
The following year ds will hopefully then go into the main year 2 class but the year after that when he is year 3 he will presumably be in the year 3 class whilst again the brighter ones go into a 3/4 mix.
I don't know what to do. There is a specific reason that ds's closest friend can't go into the year 1/2 class which I don't want to share on here and part of me wonders if they've just kept them together. They are quite reliant on each other. Otoh maybe ds isn't as able and mature as I think he is and I'm just being biased because I'm his mother. I cannot understand though why the children he is grouped with have gone into the mixed class and he hasn't.
Because this pattern will continue throughout the school and the school is poor in general (only 50% meet the end of ks2 targets, they are in the bottom for everything) I'm considering moving him. Or should I just see how it goes? I feel so torn. The class is very boy heavy too as there are only 11 girls out of 45 and 6 of them are emotionally mature so are in the 1/2 mix leaving only 5 in a class of 3. I'm not wild about this either.