School re organising primary school classes for year 2, not happy

[Bodley]

I just wondered if anyone had any advice. My son is in year 1 and has aspergers. I just received a letter from school, out of the blue, saying they had decided to re organise all the classes (there are 4) as they had decided there were issues related to learning styles, summer birthdays, special needs etc. It was put in the letter that they had thought about it carefully and weren't going to tell the children until the end of the year and they'd had a few sessions with their new classes. If we have any questions, we are to consult with school staff. I feel so upset by this. My little boy has high functioning autism and finds school hard enough as it is, but his class is lovely and he has special friends at school who seem to care for him and support him. I am so disappointed that the school did not think to at least meet with or consult the parents of special needs kids first, it feels like a bomb shell. I feel bewildered and wonder if I'm just over sensitive or what. Wonder if anyone has had any similar experiences.

We had to do this with our Yr5s this year... at the end of last June, I got a shed load of letters from parents including one purporting to come from all the parents, which was unsigned with no return address demanding that the governors did something about this.

We had held meetings with parents, explaining what we were doing and why and also explaining how the process would work. Each child was asked to name three friends who they would like to be with next year, we promised that they would at the very least get two out of the three in their class... I am not sure how this was managed but the DHT managed it.

In September we did an overnighter for every child in Yr 5 which was funded by the school... it set up new friendship groups and alliances. and at the end of the half term the difference was immense, happier classrooms and better results.

Bodley, rest assured that the staff have carefully considered this and your DS's needs will be thoughtfully considered... I think you might be surprised at how well this works for him.

When I was at senior school, they didn't shuffle classes until I was in equivalent of Y8 when they just had enough of the year and they shuffled just our year for Y9 as a punishment. Went through and split up every single friendship group, the works. Was a huge thing for them (caused by a handful of people across the year) and the year as a whole hated it. Probably quite telling that our year got significantly lower O-Level results than the school had ever had before, even though when they looked at the individuals in it, they were expecting everything as normal going on their experience.

However, I am sure that is the exception.

At the dc's infant school they shuffle the classes every year so it's no big deal, everybody expects it. They let the kids specify 3 other dc they would like to be in a class with and try to ensure that everyone has at least one if not two of those 3 friends with them (and if they are lucky they might end up with 3 of them).

Might be worth asking if they are going to do something like that too so the dc feel like they have some element of control over what they do, even if it is all contrived anyway!