Curriculum changes - Sept 2014 onwards - how will this work in mixed year classes?

[grassroots]

So, new curriculum comes in from Sept 2014 - except for years 2 and 6, who stay on the old curriculum for the year. Does anyone know how this will work in practice for those children in mixed year group classes? DC will be in a classroom where some children will be following one curriculum and others supposed to be taught to an entirely different curriculum...

Y6 and Y2 don't have to follow the new curriculum, but they can. Imo schools should be starting to introduce at least some elements of the new curric to those year groups, otherwise it'll just mean they have more catching up to do the following year. So I'd imagine schools with mixed age classes will move over to the new curric, but will be aware that they don't necessarily have to have covered absolutely everything that the following year's Y6s and Y2s will need to have done.

Hi Amber. It certainly seems that moving over to the new curriculum would be easier...but I can imaging that it might stuff up the SATS. Not sure the school will be overly keen on that?! There doesn't seem like an easy answer, but just wondered if anyone already had a plan for how its going to be managed?

It shouldn't stuff up the SATs because the new curriculum is pretty much the old one with extra hard stuff added. So if you've covered the new curriculum, you can be confident you'll have covered everything needed for SATs. You'll also have covered some stuff the kids won't need for SATs until 2016, but given that education should be about more than just preparing for exams anyway then I think that's ok.

Amber, you sound very up on all this! Do you know if there is a side-by-side comparison for the two curricula on the web anywhere? Thanks!