To think mixed year groups are based on ability

[Jellyrose20]

My daughter goes to a school where there are two classes in each year.
One class is mixed with children from the class above/ below. The other class is children all in the same year.
Now everything I read suggests it isn't based on ability, but is it really random?
I've noticed that despite being given the choice of 2 friends to stay with most "best friends" have been separated and I can't understand why.
Any teachers or experienced parents have any insight for me?

My kids school isn’t based on ability though it is somewhat based around age. They tend towards having younger ones in with the year below and older ones in with year above so they don’t end up with kids close to 2 years apart in age

In Scotland it's entirely based on age. If required oldest children in year go up to mixed class with next year up and vice versa. Nothing to do with ability. Depending on your child's birthday you can pretty easily workout if they may be in a composite class

It's always done by age ime, nothing random about it.

It wasn’t random in our school.
Age seemed to be a bigger factor than ability. I know that not all kids are the same maturity as their birthday but my experience of 3 kids (small sample) was that in the early years of school they tended to be friendliest with kids born around the same time of year as them. This effect was mainly reception/year 1/year 2. After that it didn’t matter.

At that age, ability can be affected by age. There is a whole year difference in age in DDs class between the youngest (29th Aug) and the oldest (4th Sept). That can make a huge difference in how they understand and grasp concepts, their fine motor skills - all kinds of things. It's why they give children a "reading age" *at least in our school - so of two children reading the same level book, one could have a reading age consistent with actual age, and another could have a reading age of a year more than actual age (or higher or lower).

Hmm. The age thing doesn't apply to my daughter as my daughter is the opposite end of the year to the class she's been put in. Most other children are closer to what you're all saying though with a couple of other exceptions.

In Scotland it's entirely based on age. If required oldest children in year go up to mixed class with next year up and vice versa.

Not always. My son's p5 class is being split in two. Some going up with the p6s, the rest going into a class with p4s. My son is the oldest in his class (deferred feb birthday) but the group being put into a composite with p6 includes the youngest in his class as well as him (a full year younger than my son but not deferred). The common factors seem to be that they are all in the same (top) reading group and are all doing maths at the same level.

DS's school had maximum 45 DC per year group so equivalent to 1.5 classes. Sometimes they did 3 classes mixed 50/50 with another year group and sometimes they had one class with all the same year group and a few DC in with the year above.

From what I could tell they would choose which DC to put in the year above partly on ability but also on social skills to ensure the DC in with the older class could integrate well with the older year group (this was mentioned to me by teachers). It wasn't done on age as my DC wasn't an older child in the year but ended up always with the older class when that was the option. Some of the DC who I knew were older ones in the year were not moved up.

Mine was put in the mixed class for year 3/4 when in year 4. It wasn't ability based or age based - she's one of the oldest in the year and also high ability. Most lessons they stayed in their assigned class. However, when they had maths and English they were put into ability groups mixed with the kids in the other classes. I was dubious but it worked well.
Every year the classes are jumbled up.

Def done by ability in our school. Slightly different though - small rural school, 2 classes for 3 year groups. So (for example) some of yr 2 go in with yr 1, and the rest of yr 2 go in with yr 3.

Worked for my eldest DS, my youngest however it was not good. Although I blame the teaching rather than the split classes.

It was a long time ago, but my primary school was by ability, and they were pretty blatant about it.

Ours is predominantly age with some adjustment made for social reason such as keeping close groups together and splitting troublesome groups up
they also moved a few august babies out of the mixed class selection and put some older kids in to balance out sexes
Based on our experience it's not great certainly not a positive impact
but mostly the children seem fine with it
I think it impacts the children in with the year below negatively more than the younger ones being pulled into the year above as we found ours were being held back a fair bit
also if you have any sen or behavior issues the teacher will in our experience really struggle juggling 2 curriculums
it also hugely difficult for kids who aren't good at working independently- they have to be able to in a mixed class a lot more than in a single year cohort and if they can't they'll really really struggle so work on the work ethic and focus at home!