to be unhappy with school's decision?

[OiHeadNooooo]

I have name changed because of the details in the post.

Dc2 is currently in Yr2. School are telling us that in September, when the year group are Yr3 & become KS2 pupils, they are going to divide them and keep roughly half in a shared class with Yr2, in the same classroom they are in now, whilst the others will move to the next class & share with Yr4.

We, along with most other Yr2 parents, are not happy about this as the year group will be split over the 2 key stages. This is bound to mean there will be differences in how they are treated and the level of work they will be exposed to. One major difference, that I think will mean a lot to the kids themselves, is that those with the Yr2s (as they are still in a KS1 classroom) will get an afternoon playtime, whereas the ones with the Yr4s (in a KS2 class) will not. This seems a very unfair way of treating children who are in the same year group. Particularly as friendship groups will no doubt be split & some kids will have to watch their friends go out to play when they cannot. Additionally, when KS2 or Yr3 group activities are planned the pupils in the younger class will have to leave their classroom to join in but then go back when finished. After Yr3, the year group would then come together again in Yr4, be split again in Yr5 (but possibly with different pupils in the 2 groups) & then be together again in Yr6. Essentially creating a complete lack of continuity for the rest of their time at primary school and having a differing effect on them educationally & socially.

There was a meeting for Yr2 parents where the Head gave a presentation about how this cohort split would work and it seemed to be to gauge opinion but, since the majority weren’t happy with the idea and the decision has been made to go ahead with it anyway, it would appear to have been presented as a fait accompli. It would also appear that financial considerations are more important than what is best for the children, as there are potential alternative solutions to the issue (which is an imbalance in class sizes) that could prevent splitting the year group but they would mostly create the need for an extra teacher &/or classroom space.

How would you feel if this was going to affect your dc? What would you do in response to being told about this decision?

I ask because we have a parents’ evening tonight where we will be speaking to the Head (as they are one of dc2’s teachers). Some parents had their meetings yesterday and have told me that they were informed that the decision (which was originally couched as an option albeit without any other options put forward) will be going ahead – so, never mind what the parents’ opinions are then! From what others have said, in the meeting tonight, the Head will be asking us where we would want our dc to be placed whilst telling us which class they will be placing them in and why that will be best for them.

Personally, as a parent of a current Year 2 child I would be requesting that he stays in the Y2 class next year if at all possible. Mine is quite immature and would be better suited with younger children than with older ones. There might be some parents at your school that feel that way about their children.

It seems strange splitting them across KS.

Our school have mixed classes with 2 years together, but only split Y1 - some with reception/some with Y2, until post Christmas onwards all of Y1 move to be in with Y2. That makes sense because they're all the same KS.

When I was at school (before KS came in), we had 3 classes across 2 years, and the youngest of the older year were in with the older kids from the younger year. Again it worked well, but were Y3/4 and Y4/6, while keeping the younger ones together.

As others have said, what was happening before and why the sudden split? Are other years already mixed/split? Seems a really odd split to make - unless they're going to still have them all playing together, doing work together etc in the same way that our Y1 split children do.

Our school had a similar situation a few years ago. Parents up in arms about it all and all the problems it would cause.

HT, having considered all possible solutions and decided this was the best option, quite rightly stuck to her guns and went ahead. The HT has to run the school, not the parents.

It was totally fine. None of the predicted disaster scenarios came to pass - the kids were fine. Friendships were maintained and new ones formed. Academic progress was made. One of the most vocal parents (who caused a lot of problems at the time) actually suggested they continue the arrangement the next year!

My DS is in a mixed year...First time and he is year 4 and he is in 4/5.. The one thing I have noticed is the way the classes are paired up.. there is a year six that pair up with 5/6 . The 4/5 pair up with the 4 and the 3/4 pair up with the Year 3.. However I have to say the mixed classes do seem to have the higher ability children and those who are struggling from the year above.. It seems to be working..We don't mix across Key stages though.

Tusty, the OP explained all about the current and future arrangements of classes.

At present, they have:

R/Y1
2 alone (larger than usual year group of 19)
3/4
5/6

If they keep this same arrangement next year,
2 alone = 12 children
3/4 = 31 children, so very unequal class sizes.

If the school splits only within Key Stages but aims for equal sized classes in each of the 2 classes for the key stage, there has to be a class with 3 year groups in:

R/Y1 16
Y1/Y2 16
Y3/Y4 26 or 25
Y4/Y5/Y6 25 or 26

If the school splits as suggested, the school has 4 classes, all of around 21, none with more than 2 year groups in.

Composite classes are the norm in my area, my DS1 is currently in a P1/P2 class and he will probably be in composites all the way through school because they previously had very small classes and then last year a new housing estate was built which has quadrupled their intake. I was in a few composite class twice in school and it didn't interrupt my education. My DS1 has a good teacher who is very capable of splitting her time and the work between P1 and P2.

my dds previous school did this......asked parents....ignored them and did it anyway......hence the reason it's her previous school

they handled it badly and just split the year down the middle with youngest at ks1 and older at ks2

my daughter was the youngest in her year and she suffered greatly as she was already working at ks2 and they gave her ks1 work todo.

I'd have a full and frank conversation with the head, yes they may have no choice and it may work, but then it may not

I've taught mixed classes and as in this case, a mixed key stage.

It's like a previous post said, it can be for many different reasons but the headteacher at your school probably doesn't have a choice due to budget. In an ideal world, there'd be small class sizes and separated year groups. That isn't the case most of the time.

So the ones stopping with the year twos will probably benefit from maybe consolidating some year two expectations and the 3/4 group will be moving on to the ks2 expectations. Whatever the reason, the teacher will be able to deal with a mixed year group and teach accordingly.

As for play times, some infants are scrapping afternoon play because there's far to much to squeeze into a day to be able to justify a playtime.

I would only be confereed if my child wasn't making progress or wasn't happy. If they are (and they should get along fine) then it's all good.

That seems a bit daft, splitting them by age.
Common sense would be to look at their ability and go from there. I can see how that didn't work.
Age is just a number...

The criteria used for the split will be the trickiest issue.

In fact, splitting by ability can get SO heated that many schools do it by age because it is an objective and undebatable measure....

A split by a 'gut feeling' mixture of academic ability, social grouping and emotional maturity will work best, but is the hardest to 'justify' to sceptical parents in the face of challenge, so I would expect if the school is facing opposition anyway it will go either for pure age or by KS1 assessment results, as those can be seen as 'a factual basis'.

At a previous school. The new year five class were to be split in two. The cleverer half were to be taught by the teacher. The "thicker, less clever half were to be taught by the TA. The new year five class were considerably smaller come the September..

Totally know how you feel, we had the same issues with the school our DS attended.

A small village school it was all very political!

To start with they said it was to do with friendship groups, maturity, ability, etc. Which was total nonsense, our kid was one of the brightest and mature yet due to his teacher at the time being too busy writing her CV and visiting the new school she was moving to she couldn't be bothered to do her job properly.

We even joked at parents evening saying that she had no idea who our DS was - we were right. When it was all change in the new term we argued that he should have been moved up into the Yr 2 class as we felt staying with the reception and Yr 1's would hold him back, he had out grown this class. But due to him being a little reserved and quiet the school said it would suite him better! Yeah to be in a room full of screaming reception kids.

We took it to the governors who needless to say were in the pocket of the school and then they changed tack and said he wasn't smart enough to be moved up when he clearly was. (When his friends came to play I interrogated them on what book levels they were on - DS was way more advanced).

We spent the better part of a year arguing with them, the school just didn't want to admit they were in the wrong and that the reception teacher was useless.

DS has since moved up to middle school, needless to say his new school got him pegged correctly and he went straight into the smart set.

We were right despite the primary school messing with his education, two fingers up at the school.

The problem is the teaching establishments want all kids to be well rounded and confident - sorry we don't buy into this performing monkey idea all kids are different and marking them down because they are shy and they don't want to go up on stage isn't my idea of a well rounded society. Are we just breeding 'X Factor' Wanna be's?

You can try and stand your ground, but don't be too surprised if the head changes the rules, supplement their education at home and get them out of the school as soon as you can.

Our school has had 9/10/11 classes. They have split/mixed in various ways throughout the 10 years we've been there. But NEVER mixed across KS. Currently they have 3 year 5/6 classes, 2 year 3/4 classes, not sure what's happening in KS1 anymore (actually, I think they avoid mixing R and y1 now, though they used to. Pan increased). Last year there were 2 y5/6, 1 y4/5, 2 y3/4. Occasionally there has been a single year class, but it's very rare. I wouldn't have been very happy about it if they split as your school plans to do.

Unfortunately mixed classes are fairly common but I think it's a bad idea to mix over the KS1/ KS2 divide or to mix Year 6. It's super annoying of the school to pretend to listen when they have no intention of changing their mind. It's also annoying if they patronise parents and pretend it's a great idea- they should acknowledge they are trying to make the best of a bad situation.

Those people saying that they wouldn't be very happy with the proposed split, what do you feel the best split would be, based on 4 classes and 83 children, given the variable number of children in each year group?

• Rec & Yr1: 20
• Yr2: 12
• Yr3 & Yr4: 31
• Yr5 & Yr6: 20

OR

• R/Y1 16
• Y1/Y2 16
• Y3/Y4 26 or 25
• Y4/Y5/Y6 25 or 26

As I have said before, given the current financial climate, they are really lucky, given that they have fewer than 90 children, that they are not being forced to go back down to 3 classes (which was how the school used to operate) each with 27 / 28 children. The OP states that the school used to run with:

R/Y1
Y2/Y3
Y4/5/6

As this wouldn't work with current numbers in the classes, there would be some further splitting needed - but even so the classes would be below the 'economic number' of 30 per class that is usually required.

This happened to my son, when he finished year one and had to stay in with hte reception class while half the class, by age, went up to share a class with year 3 and 4, because of an unexpected bulge in one of the years.

It wasn't what we would have wanted, but, now in his first year at a very good university, having done very well at GCSE and A levels,I can't honestly say it made any difference at all. The primary school was good at mixing them up so that they had various lessons with their year cohort.

"I think it's a bad idea to mix over the KS1/ KS2 divide or to mix Year 6"

It may - or may not - be a bad idea, but the head has to consider the practicalities of the situation.

It's not possible to work out from the OP's numbers the exact number in Y6, but if it is 12 (the PAN), and if you also don't want mixing over KS1/2, then the class sizes would be:

R/Y1: 16
Y1/Y2: 16
Y3/4/5: around 39
Y6: 12

Or you have to go for:
R/Y1/Y2: 32
Y3: 19
Y4/Y5: around 20
Y6: 12

Which are obviously both worse than the current proposal which at least gives equal class sizes and no more than 2 year groups in any one class.

This actually happened to me while I was in primary school. I was in the year above for a year and then the next year joined my old classmates once again. Unfortunately my mother is no longer around to ask and my father would have a clue as to why but I can say it didn't effevt me or the people in the opposite class as far as I sm aware. Everything just went back to normal. I understand your frustration just wanted to give you that x

The maximum of 30 children per class is only a legal requirement for infants ( up to end of year 2). Our school also has 4 classes but we have an EAN of 16 and are always oversubscribed. Our year 1 is split in the way you describe, to keep class sizes below the legal maximum, but after that the class sizes can and do go above 30 so the OP should count herself lucky!

Ours is split as follows with approx totals in brackets:
Class 1: reception and 4-6 children from year 1 (20-22)
Class 2: most of year 1 and all of year 2 (usually about 26)
Class 3: years 3 and 4 (around 32)
Class 4: years 5 and 6 (around 32)

The year 1 split isn't popular but it's necessary so it's accepted by parents. The split is done by ability and/or emotional maturity. The interesting thing is that most first time parents are desperate for their child to move into the higher class in year 1, whereas the parents whose children have been through the system and those with SEN children often want the opposite. There are more TAs in the younger class and therefore the children who stay down get more individual attention and tend to make faster progress. The classes mix at playtime and for certain subjects eg maths where they are grouped by ability rather than age. In class 1, the reception children play in the afternoon, whereas the year 1s in the class have lessons, same as they do in class 2.
It sounds to me as though you headteacher is still trying to work things out. Regarding your concerns about playtime, I don't see why the year 2s couldn't be kept in and given some year-specific work to do, while the year 1s go out in the afternoon, if that is the main issue parents are concerned about.

Sorry for bad spelling, doing late lunches so rushing :) x

TheTroubleWith,

I don't think that is quite fair, as it is clear that her DC is a) a younger sibling and b) would be in the class of 31 if unsplit.

I do think she does not want the 'lovely group who have come up through nursery and pre-school' [but by implication perhaps not the extra children who have been let in lately and thus 'created the problem' by increasing the number to 19] split up in any way.