Can mixed year groups work - advice needed

[GooseyLoosey]

Ds is in a small village primary school with 6 classes across 7 years.

He is 8. Currently he does numeracy with a gifted Yr 5 boy. In other subjects, according to his teacher he gets "high level 4 input". He is described by the school as an "exceptional" child. He has an IQ of 150+. He also has social integration issues. Other children perceive him as "wierd" and other parents (unless they know him) do not like him. He is also increasingly lazy as in his words he "already knows the answers to everything the teacher asks".

Next year (Yr 5), he is due to stay down in the same class. The class will be a mixed Yr 4/5 class with around 34 children in it. About 25 of these children will be Yr 4.

Do you think we can make this work? The school say he will have properly differentiated work, but I fail to see in such a large class how this will really work. I also worry that if he finds everything easy now, he will just give up next year.

What do you think? Is there anything that the school or we can do to make this work for him?

I'll be watching this thread closely as I'm almost in the same situation and I'm not quite sure how it's going to work. My ds will be in year 4 and will be with year 3s. I've been assured the work will be differentiated according to ability but I'm still not Sirenia it'll work.

All four of my DC are/were in mixed year groups, two of them in a school with only 3 classes for reception through to Year 6 where they had brilliant, experienced but now sadly retired teachers. Dont think it held them back at all tbh - I think it provides a lot more flexibility to teach children according to ability rather than age.

Just to add, the separation between August and September born children is, anyway, artificial and children do not develop/advance at the same rates nor linearly. DD3 who struggled until very recently made the most progress she has ever made when in a Yr3/4 class when she was Yr4 and the stability of keeping the same teacher for 2 years I think helped her a lot.

In my experience there was a bit of duplication going on in Year 4, repeating some of the Year 3 stuff. Saying that it didn't seem to have hindered DS2 and he is doing very well in Year 5 now.

Thanks all. My main concern is that ds is described as "complacent" already and I worry that this will exacerbate the problem and he will start to form habits of not working at school. I can see this happening a bit already. Even if the school differnetiate his work (as I am sure they will), it will not really address this problem - that he is bored and thinks he knows it all.

The class will be so large as well that I can't see that the poor teacher will have much time to help him when I know there are many other children there who struggle.

It does work for my dd she y1 and in y1 and 2 class, her work is suposidly differentiated as she works beyond the yr2 children. I am not convinced though that her work is differentiated that much though to be honest. she is always first with answers etc and she does challenge the teacher somewhat as she is very quick with the answers and thinks she knows it all, I cant imagine she would cope too well being kept back in the class for another year. My dd would see this as a failure and probably would knock her confidence.

In your sons case I would be a little concerned if he is already bored in class, he will in effect be repeating a year, albeit with differeniated work. I would think it seems more sensible to move your son up to a yr 5 or 5/6 class to challenge him further and differentiate his work in that class with the knowledge he needs work hard.