Be honest… would you be ok with your child in a classroom like this?! Apparently common in state sector

[Mrppp]

our daughter is due to start school next September. We learned today that the classes are merged from ages 5 to 9. So 5 and 6 year olds in one class, 7 and 8 in another etc. This means in some instances children with be two years apart, depending when they are born, but in the same class?

surely this is crazy? Development is huge over a year at that age?

Still very much a thing from my experience. A Junior school local to me (South East) has mixed year group classes now. They just don't have the numbers to fill whole classes for each year group so they have to mix. Another school has two year groups mixed and the others are single year groups. A lot depends on numbers and of course funding which is impacted massively by numbers, of course. I wouldn't be worried about this any more than I'd be worried about any other aspect of school really.

All my children had this through pre and primary school. It was great. No complaints from me. Only downside for them was when their older pals left for secondary school and they still had their last primary year to do.

I think that would only be the case in tiny schools.

Plenty of Primaries are 5 form entry like my DC's so is not a normal thing.

Common in Scotland where kids just go to the catchment school (no applying for primary schools), so the size of the classes depends on the number of children in that year in catchment. It can work well, it can be diabolical. We had to buy materials and teach our child ourselves, but then again we were very unfortunate with the teacher.

Just ignore me I didn’t read the post properly

It’s pretty common for year groups to be merged.

Mine due to age and sibling were in a lot of composite classes usually worked on where your birthday falls so the youngest of one year would be with the oldest of the year below in (Scotland) my eldest is a march b day so was often in the composite with the kids from above year and my younger son was in with the younger kids from his brothers year but he was a younger kid it’s just a smaller class so better for him. The classes all mixed well too so been handy for high school where the kids all know people from year above. Eldest also did really well academically.

80s rural primary happened did no harm to me or siblings.

Was more taken aback moving to this city to find it was the case for our older kids though youngest the numbers were higher so wasn't done.

I think how well it goes is dependent on teacher and actual class size and general resources available - old two school had staff to separate out into year groups for a few things.

This is very common in rural schools in Ireland, but the teaching staff are well used to it

Ours is ages 4-11 in just 2 classes - infant & primary. It works fine.

It's not that much of a stretch. I reckon at least a third of 7 year olds would do better at the pace of the 6 year olds and at least a third of the 6 year olds would do better at the pace of the 7 year olds so that's a big chunk sorted without any impact! Then split the rest into mixed ability as they tend to do at phonics and maths time anyway and you're pretty much exactly the same as a normal class.

This is normal and has been the case for many years. It happens more in primary than secondary - in secondary it is more important to separate year groups because the curriculum becomes more complex.

Rural Scotland, normal here.

It's actually now an even bigger gap development wise due to extra year nursery being offered. So they can be 4 or 6 in primary one.

I work with lots of rural families and quite a few kids go to small village school with mixed age classes.

I went to a tiny school on Dartmoor as a child, with 1 infant class and 1 junior class. The work was set out to cover different ages and abilities.

Totally normal in rural areas. My DCs primary school had 35 children. All the teachers knew all the children very well and we're able to support them throughout their time at the school.

Very common in smaller schools and they tend to select, for example, the older kids from one year group to be in with the younger from the next year up so the age spread is usually not much more than a year, v which is only a little more than in a standalone class.

I went to a primary school like that. I worked out fine.

My primary school in central London had mixed year classes in the 1980s!

Just messaged my sil to find out size of dn's school, 16, that's 16 children aged 4-11! Island living

It's common in small rural schools. It's fine for most but doesn't suit everyone, depends on your DC. One of mine didn't get on with it at all, took time to adjust every year to the annual change in the class cohort especially in years paired with DC who could be up to 2 years younger, was given lots of busy work worksheets when in the older half, that sort of thing. Make sure the pace suits your DC and ability is differentiated appropriately. Less opportunity for friendship, if there's a disruptor they're really dominant, if there's a clique you're more likely to be isolated while in a bigger school the disruptor/clique or whatever can be annoying but are more like background noise. That was our experience anyway, and other parents said similar. We eventually moved to a single year group school which suited ours better.

Sounds normal for a countryside school or a special needs school

I went to a small school and the classes were combined (2 years at a time). I was at the younger end of my year group, so there were people in my class who were 2 years older than me. I absolutely loved it; I found it really interesting to watch what the class above were doing.

They always split the work up into ability anyway, with each year group.

It's quite common in my area. Lots of schools seem to have 1.5 form entry so have 3 mixed classes. I know of some larger schools doing that too that could cope with single year groups (size wise). It is fine.

I was in a merged class reception/y1 equivalent (other country), I ended up skipping a class and went straight from reception to y2. So obviously I voted YABU!

No I wouldn't be happy but as it's your only option you have no choice.

A friends school does this and her kids really struggled with it. Not helped by the fact they decided to have teachers in on a job share so come Wednesday lunchtime the teacher changed for the second half of the week.