Moving from reception to Year 1 and classes being split

[Eveiebaby]

DD is currently in reception due to start Year 1 in September. She goes to a school which has three classes of 30 pupils per year. I assumed that once DD started in reception she would stay with the same class of children for the rest of her years at the school . However, I have found out that sometimes the school splits the classes and mixes the children up again for Year 1. I was just wondering if anybody else's dc attend a school that has this policy. I was just curious really as to why the school would do this?

I think it quite often happens in schools with more than one class per year.

My Sons school mix them up every year. I think its a good thing to do. In YR DS really struggled to settle into a good group of friends. but where they have been moved around and hes made some very good friends. they all know each other well now they are in Y2 and are a very close year group.

On a social level i think it teaches them alot, senior school is never continuous, then they move to collage, work, change jobs. helps them learn to cope well with social changes from a young age.

We normally don't but this year we are splitting the three Y1 classes before they move into Y2. There ar some key individuals who would really benefit from the classes being split, and tbh the classes do need mixing up to make the more balanced in terms of ability and needs, from both a teacher's and a pupil's pov. We haven't told parents or pupils yet. We have written lists of friendship groups so every child will be with at least one of their closer friends from their current friends.

The school DDs go to does this and I think it has worked well so far. I know a lot of the parents were understandably a bit concerned as to how it would work but the general consensus is that things are fine. I know next year I will be pleased for DD#2 as there is every hope they will split up the trouble makers in her class and she will have a less disrupted year as for some reason they seem to have a mix that doesn't work too well behaviour wise.

I think it can be a really good idea to split classes.

It creates a year group in which children know and are friends with children across the year group, not just their own class.

It gives the teachers a chance to 'manage' difficult relationships without having to single individual children out for changing class.

It's not like the children will never see their original classmates, they will still share playtimes, lunch breaks, assemblies, work in differentiated groups together etc.

My DCs infant school does this,

It works brilliantly and ia a very positive thing imo.

By the time they are in Year 2 they allnow so many of the 90 children in their year group - it is really great that they all mix so easily.

It gives them a chance to make new friends.
It allows the teacher to organise lessons in different combinations of childdren/grouping.

Embrace it! I have found that although the children are fine with it, some parents do tend to get a bit stressed by it....

My dc's school does this - it's very successful for the reasons everyone has mentioned.

They do this at dd and ds's school.

Makes sense really. When the children start school in the most part the teachers have no way of engineering a cohesive and untroubled class, because the children are all new. Then over the course of the Reception year the teachers can assess how friendship groups work, and the class dynamics - working out which friendship groups are positive and which have a negative impact on the children during lesson times.

DS1s current reception year group have been divided, for registration purposes only, into 2 classes of thirty children by the alphabet. Mostly they are taught in smaller groups and roam between the classrooms depending on what activity is going on where.

When DD was in Recption they only swapped about 8 kids - 4 from each class. The year below dd though had substantial issues and quite a difficult/explosive intake. If they had left the classes as they were on first intake would have ended up with a complete lack of balance between classes in terms of statements/SEN/friendships and so on. So that's when the started doing a full scale mix up.

Then, so long as the classes are bobbing along nicely they are left alone from yrs1 - 6.

Also totally agree that it's the parents who seem perturbed by it!!

I went to a school that did this (in the 70s) so it's normal to me!

Thanks everyone - it seems like a positive experience. I think I was just surprised as I made an assumption that the class would stay together but I have no idea why I thought that really. Clayhead - I went to primary school in the 70's too but I can't even remember if my classes got split!

I did this when I was a teacher with my YR class - too many boisterous boys in one class, several children with Statements of SEN in the other. It was deemed necessary to provide a better balance of learning needs and behavioural needs for the classes.

emeraldislander - totally agree.

I'm a teacher of Year 1 (on sick leave at the moment due to suspected DVT - hopefully back tomorrow following negative doppler scan!) and if you have an 'imbalance' of children (boys/girls due to incoming and leaving children, behaviour issues, SEN) it is better for ALL children that classes are 'even' as possible as it can affect ALL children.

We tend to do it if we're going to have mixed classes, not if there is an imbalance. Our YR staff make sure they are in constant communication with the Nurseries in the town to make sure an imbalance doesn't occur.

Try not to worry as most schools ALWAYS make sure that friendship groups stay together unless it's the type of friendship that hampers learning!

It's a huge benefit of being in a bigger small - and a huge disadvantage to being in a smaller school.

I wish they would in our school. DD is in absolutely the wrong class with none of her friends and it would make the world of difference for her to be with other children.

feel better soon Mum2be79!

We do this in our infants- generally the children are mixed at the end of Reception, then again at the end of year 2. Friendship groups, overall abilities across the year group, behaviour, and split of boys/girls are all taken into account when mixing.

Last year, all of the Reception teachers agreed that they would prefer their classes to go into year 1 together, without being mixed, as they were all such lovely, cohesive classes already. Fast forward a year (actually, fast forward just a term ), and it had already been decided that they will have to be split up at the end of this year, for the sanity of the year 2 teachers! What appeared to be lovely groupings of children, as they've matured a bit, have turned into some really unfortunate ones, with all of the 'characters' in one class together, one class much lower ability than the others, another class where all of the boys fall out constantly, etc etc. Now they will get mixed up twice in two years, as the head of the juniors will still want them mixing again at the end of year 2.

They do this at the school my ds attends where they have two classes per year. What has actually happened is that in each year group a core of 'higher achieving' kids stay together as they move through the school, a core of 'lower achieving' kids stay together each year and whilst the group of kids in the middle ground get moved into a different class each time. There is always a lot griping from parents who think it is just streaming by another name. The majority of kids are happy with it but there will always be one or two who find they are never in a class with their friends. My son and one of his closest friends have not been in the same class since Reception and they are now Yr4. Luckily, ds has a wider group of friends than this boy who is mostly unhappy with his situation.

Sorry I should have added that the two classes are also mixed with children from the year above or year below. So currently, there is one Y4/Y5 class and one Y3/4 class. I guess this is because the numbers in the school are low and it is easier to to split the kids by ability to make the mixed teaching simpler. I don't know and to be honest I am not that bothered. DS is happy, motivated and on the right track.

DS's school mixes the classes every year. I think it works well in that he knows all the children in the school and has a mix of friends. His closest friends have consistently been in the "other" class, so it hasn't prevented cross class friendships.

Our school has mixed classes. However, they had one year 1 class and one year 1/year 2 class. Ds was in year1/2 class which concerened me as his close friends were in the other class. However, it worked well. He now has some really close friends from that class but has retained reception friends too.

Sometimes combinations emerge you'd really like NOT to be combined!

Sometimes class numbers get unevened out - with kids joining and HAVING to be in one particular class or the other because of access issues or different classroom sizes or whatever, and kids leaving... that one happened with one of the classes I had - by mid-juniors one of the classes was larger in the year than the other, so children were asked to volunteer (with parents' approval) to move to the other one in the year group. Having seen some of the treasures in the opposite year class - I can understand why the ones who chose to move did so!