Schools with combined years: Good, bad ugly?

[SevenNationArmyWife]

Currently looking at a primary for DC where years 1/2, 3/4, 5/6 are combined. I’ve never had any direct experience of this model and wonder how it’s worked for others?

Draylon: As Dancer describes. Sorry I was not clear earlier.

For 90 children in Y1 and Y2:
A Y1 class of 30 children where the children are in the correct age group.
A Y2 class of 30 children where all the children are in the correct age group.
The mixed Y1/Y2 is a hybrid of children from Y2 who are either needing more attention (poorly behaved or below in attainment) with the older children in Y1.

Or similar arrangements throughout the school.

The point is that a very young child is labelled as badly behaved or not meeting targets and is separated from their peers due to this. It is obviously saying you are not good enough to be in the full Y2 class. It would not be acceptable to me and most people who do accept it, have the brighter children who are not hived off. How do ypu choose the Y1 childrento be mixed with the Y1 children who need extra support? Are they the summer borns, or the autumn borns? Or another group of lesser achieving/naughty chidren?

It is clearly treating a group of 30 children differently to their peers and it segregates them along perceived intelligence or behavour lines or because they are older/younger. What if the hived off children have SEN? Is it fair they are segregated? It is not what inclusivity is about. Mix up two age groups by all means but do it for all.

DC's school used to do this. the Ofsted report said it was fine except for year 5s who didn't get much attention compared to the Y6s.

They had 45 kids per year at my son's primary, so there were lots of "mixed" classes. They did their best to make the classes similar ability, and it probably worked out better than basing classes on age only. They moved kids at each year according to how they were performing, so the strugglers in one year were put with the younger year and the higher performers were put in the older year. So, range of ability in each class wasn't that much wider than a single year group. There were 10 classes in total - you "jumped" one class in infants and 2 classes in junior.

It was the same at my primary 40+ years ago, but it was slightly smaller so I only jumped 1 class in infants and 1 in junior.

I actually think it's better than just automatically having to move with your age group every Summer, as it gives a small opportunity to match ability rather than age.

Ofsted really do not care about class organisation. They care about high quality teaching and progress. How a school achieves that is down to them.

Kazzy: that’s a grammar school system at primary school! Promotion for the brightest and kept back for the SEN and strugglers! So that’s all good then. Great prep for what life throws at you! Parents of the strugglers really like this do they? The grammar stream get identified early in your school.

Around here all the village schools have some mixed age classes as they don't have the numbers to do anything else. PAN is often 15 or 20. Children make friends outside their year group as they can all play together at breaks. If you wanted to avoid mixed age classes you would struggle here as we are too far away from the schools in the nearest towns with larger entries to get a reception place generally.

my daughter was in mixed class it worked well until the older one went to Big School then the younger one where split into the other two classes as there where only 7 left my daughter did cope well in new class

My children at two different state schools have done mixed year groups
It's ok it works well if your child is an average child in the midde of a cohort
Academically teachers differentiate and I don't think it makes much difference as ability spreads are so wide anyway.

Socially it can be hard -you can be 2 years ahead or behind your peers. This can be fine but can be dreadful at certain ages. Certain ages seem to be transition ages and being very young or old during this isn't great. Eg lots of 6 year olds watch cbeebies but not as many 7 year olds do, or my eldest just turned 9 (August boy) and was with kids just turning 11 and they were very different - walking home alone, had mobiles etc.