Primary School class split

[Mummaearth]

AIBU - My son currently attends a small primary school and is currently in a year 3/4 class. Have been spoken to by the head and told they are restructuring the classes and his new class will be going Y4/5/6 from September. However, due to numbers, a couple of the children will have to move to the Y2/3 class which they will call a Y2/3/4 class but the majority of the class will be Y2 & Y3 and there will only be about 3 Y4 children in that class. They have told me he is one of the ones to stay in that class with the younger year groups as he struggles, which he does because he is dyslexic!

AIBU to think that this is a horrendous move that will destroy any self esteem he still has or am I just being an overprotective Mama bear whoe doesn't want her son hurt?

Does your DC get on with the others that he will be with? Is he socially and emotionally mature?

It might actually be worse for him to be with the older ones, depending on the answers to the questions above.

I think you are negatively framing this unnecessarily.

There are only 3 teachers at the school and apart from the R/Y1 class which must be capped at 30 the other two classes are going to be over 31 students in each class with a massive range of ages.

From what you are all saying I don't think I'm overreacting to be absolutely appalled at this.

I'm going to send another email to the Head tomorrow and if I don't get a speedy response get onto the Academy CEO and local county.

I can't see how being in a 6/5/4 class with the 6/5 way ahead of him is going to help your son it may not be what you want but if the classes have to be split like this he might be better being in a 4/3/2 class

He is very socially and emotionally mature and gets on with all the kids in his year really well....apart from the one they are putting him with :(

I had the opposite happen to me. I was put up a year and had to stay behind the last year in primary school. A couple of boys did the same but I was the only girl. Complete disaster. Fight tooth and nail not to let this happen

so it really has to be a Y1/R then a Y4/3/2 then a Y6/5/4 split, from what you have said they have to split the Y4 class to stop the 6/5/4 class being 35+ pupils
to be honest it would be better if numbers allowed to have 4-5 of Y4 in the 4/3/2 class rather than just 3
and if it has to be I would really push to get it described as a 4/3/2 class not a 2/3/4 it just sounds better

My brother's first school had R/1/2 and 3/4/5/6 which was frankly a nightmare.

His next school had R/1/2, 2/3/4 and 4/5/6.

This worked a lot better, and I can imagine it may well work okay once the structure is embedded. (But think that an R/1/2 class rather than R/1 would help reduce the dominance of the younger kids in the middle class.)

Could the school keep a few of the Y2s in the R/1 class to make room for a few more Y4s in the 2/3/4 class?

If he's currently a Y3 in a Y3/4 class it might not feel so painful as he will still be going up to being the biggest in his class - like he would have been if it had stayed Y3/4. I just think ideally you'd have a bit more than 1/4 of the year group, to keep the class balanced.

This is one of the real problems with small / tiny primary schools - variation between year group numbers can force a choice between an over-large class or splitting a single year group across 2 already disparate classes.

In a mixed age group scenario, i would ALWAYS go for an option where all of a single year group has the same experience - ie all in the same class - not where some are with younger and some with older children. this is particularly the case if the split is uneven.

The key piece of information that you need is the numbers in each year group.

If e.g. there are 12 in Y6, Y5 and Y4, then I think you could reasonably argue that a class of 36 is preferable to a class of 33 with 3 separated in a different classroom - especially if e.g. 2 and 3 are slightly bigger.

Hi OP this school isn’t in Kent is it? A similar thing is happening at my children’s school.

I think the problem is that if all the 4's were with the 5&6 class it would be about 35-36 pupils and the 2/3 class is only about 27-28 pupils so they want/need to even it up at 32/32 as legally the class size is not supposed to be above 32, which is why about 3-4 of Y4 pupils need to be in the 3/2 class

How are the current classes managed? If there are only 3 teachers I'm surprised they've had just a yr 3/4 class this year

Teacup, in England there is no legal class size maximum for KS2.

For a class with a majority of KS1, it has to be 30 or below under Class Size Regulations (so if, for example, in this scenario, the Y2 group had 16 children, then the class they were in could not be >30), but for KS2 there is no maximum.

School funding must be really bad in your area.

Those numbers mean the school isn't that tiny (around 95 pupils?)

That ought to justify the LEA providing 4 teacher - R, Y1/2, Y3/4 and Y5/6. Those are standard splits, follow keystage patterns and would give you around 20-25 in a class, I imagine which isn't unusually small for a rural area.

Why are there only 3 teachers?

Unfortunately this is just one of the perils of very small schools. You can have a go at e-mailing, but it isn’t likely to get you anywhere. If you do e-mail, then it is worth asking how they are going to ensure that he has the same access to the curriculum as the rest of his year group.

If you do really object to it, you’re best bet might just have to be to move schools though.

In my case the school was forced to take 5 more Year R children by the local authority. This means that there will be 20 Year 1 children and 15 Year 2 children in a mixed 1/2 class which isn’t allowed. So there will be a mixed 2/3/4 class as you can go above 30 in KS2. Poor teacher! Poor children too.

Manic,

Many of the more leafy rural counties are those that are least well-funded.

28-30 children per class is basically 'break even' point in these counties, and even then, only barely, especially for a small school where the cost of e.g. even a part-time head is higher per pupil than in a larger school.

In particular, it would be REALLY rare to be able to have a stand-alone reception class of c. 12-15.

12 per year is 84 pupils so only enough funding for 3 teachers.

This happened to me and destroyed my school career! Year 3 I was moved to year 5 and it was horrible. Got bullied by the class I was in because I was younger, bullied by the class I should have been in because I was a "brainiac", started to slow my progress and it took years to catch up. My parents tried so hard to fight it but it was the only school I'm the village and they couldn't do much more

So true cantkeepawayforever. The only way the school can afford a headteacher is for him/her to teach too.

Do you have good alternatives if you move him?

It doesn't sounds sustainable or particularly positive.

Schools with a PAN of 15 often do run a straight reception class. Especially if they are always full to 90.

It’s less likely with a PAN of 12 unless you end up with an odd split of classes further up the school or a very large ks2 class.

No, not in Kent, think due to poor funding it's happening everywhere. The school did have a fourth teacher this last year but they are not being reemployed this year. I think there's about 86 students.

How are those 86 split between year groups?

Wow, that's really sad. I don't believe any child in a composite class of 3 year groups is going to reach their full potential unless it's a really small class with a very dedicated teacher.