Can someone please explain something to me about school classes?

[MorningCoffee]

My children moved to a new school & the classes seem to be different they go as follows -

Year R
Year R/1
Year 1/2
Year 2
Year 3
Year 4
Year 5
Year 6

Dd was 6 in january and she has been in Year R/1 although for her age she would be in year 1 like she was in the school before, in september she would go into year 2, can anyone explain to me what the split classes are for R/1 and 1/2 why is this done?

Thank you

It's usually down to numbers in the year groups, it would appear there are more than 30 reception children but not enough to make two viable reception classes, and the same possibly in year two. Different schools use different ways to assign classes but usually the older reception go with the younger year 1, and the same year 1 and 2.

Presumably they are mixing up classes to adjust numbers and not go over 30 in a class, or to keep all the class numbers small. Was Y1 a low birth year?

Does seem a funny mix though. We have just gone up to 75 intake, 3 small classes in Reception next year and have to decide how to mix classes from next Summer, either 5 split classes or 2 Y1, 2 Y2 and 1 y1/2.

Thank you, So does that mean as dd is going to be in year 1/2 in sept i presume she stays there for a year then will she just jump to year 3? it is confusing me, am going to ask tomorrow

Possibly not, because as she moves up the school the number of pupils will stay the same in the year group. It could be that there are more pupils in current reception /year 1 /2 than there are in the junior end of the school. This would mean that as she progresses through the school she there will always be mixed age teaching in her year group.
The alternative is that the school has an admission number of something like 36 or 38, which then means to meet the infant class size regulations that they have mixed classes in the infants but that the school then runs with large classes in years 3/4/5/6.
The easiest thing to do is find out what is the published admission number for the school and then whether the school is full or just has awkward numbers in different year groups.

She will be in Y1 now and be Y2 next term, she will be taught as a Y2 child as this is her age group, there will be differentiation across the class so the older/more able get the harder, more appropriate work so she will progress normally to Y3 in a years time. We have a small village school so my boys have progressed through R - Y1/2 - Y3/4 - Y5/6. Although DS3 is currently very excitedly telling everyone he is going straight into Y2 as he is going up to Y1/2 next term . DS1 had no trouble going up to a large secondary from this set up if that is something you are worrying about.

Sorry I missed part of your point, the boys have always considered they were in Y1, Y2, Y3, Y4 etc, just because the class is mixed they have still been in 'their' year IYSWIM. Poor teacher of the year 3/4 class had 4 years of me at parents meetings with the 2 year age gap between DS1 and DS2