Grouping of Reception Classes

[gymnasticrobotics]

In a school with 2 or more reception classes how are the children normally grouped? Will the school balance using factors such as boy/girl ratio, autumn/summer born, english as second language etc or is it generally quite random?

Sorry if it is obvious I have no knowledge or experience of schools in the uk!

Thanks!!

oooh, good question.

I eagerly await the answer...

Random but a balance of known sen and age. Our school splits at end of reception to get range of classes for year 1 once they know the children.

There are 3 classes in my dc's school. They were very careful to balance genders and age for each class.

IME (teacher, but never in EYFS) they are carefully balanced for known factors (gender, birthdate, identified needs etc) but you can't factor in things like characters and as yet unidentified needs. For that reason it is possible to end up with unbalanced classes that may have to be re-jigged.

Many schools combine YR in EYFS 'units' for most of the time anyway.

In our school we knocked through and have 1 big class (split into 4 smaller groups ) then they split them up in Year 1 by age, sex, ability (slightly) it is easier to group them once you know yhe children

I don't know. But when looking around at the school, the two classes to me seemed different abilities. One class were cpunting to 10, the other were adding up! When I asked how they were put into clasess, the teacher skirted around the answer-but she specifically didn't say randomly! I think she had me down as a pushy mum who wanted her dc in "top" class .

If they weren't 'set' then I am a little worried by the difference tbh .

Did you watch one class for a bit and then walk to the other who were also doing maths P3ppa? If so it may well have been the same maths lesson but it started with a 'warm up' of counting and moved on to number bonds to 10.

They don't look at the names, unfortunately. So you'll get all the Olivias and Jacks in one class and all the Isabellas and Toms in the other

I have experienced different ways in different schools.

When dd1 started school she was in the autumn/winter born class. They were full time from the start. The other class was spring/summer and they were part time until Christmas then full after.

But dd2 started at a different school still on same area and they had an even allocation of ages across the year and in each class. The summer born kids were still part time until Christmas but about half of each class went home at lunch then the remainder were put together and taught by one of the reception teachers.

There was no streaming by ability in either school.

Ours appear sorted by sex and they've distributed known SEN.

However after the first term they do stream for a little bit of literacy across the groups (Split all 3 classes into about 9 groups each with their own teacher/ta). I believe they do something similar for writing to. THis happens across the years for literacy hour, which isn't as much as an hour in reception. Seems to work really well.

Thanks a lot for the replies, it seems that there is quite a variety so I guess I will have to ask (subtly.....)!

My was in a large teaching space for 60 with satellite classrooms for smaller group work. She worked with children of similar ability even though she was summer born. The school took little notice of birth dates but judged on ability. It was a state school. I think this is the best way so children can go at the pace best suited to them.

We balance ours as far as possible in terms of:

SEN
Gender
Requested friendships (if the nursery teacher or previous setting agrees with the parent's request)
Age within the year
Ability

so that the two classes are as equal as possible.

3/4 of ours come up from the nursery and the nursery staff have a significant input in trying to ensure a balance of abilities/behaviours etc as well as the gender/age facts which are known for everybody. However both of DC's years have still ended up with a "good" class and one less so and they have been rejigged at the end of year 2. Fortunately they do look at names and try to keep the duplicates separate where possible.

ours SEEMS to be split boys and girls evenly, English as a second language evenly, then within the English as a second language the one major group (makes up nearly 50% of ALL the intake) is split evenly too. Does seem a good mix of birthdays too so I would assume that is included but the language split and sex split are definitely the key ones where we are.

then at end of R they are all mixed up again (60 children in total) and again at end of every year up the school.

DSs school did an age split so the oldest half were in one class and the youngest half in the other to start with then swapped children over to suit abilities. The classes worked together a lot anyway and there was lots of swapping classrooms for different activities, so which class children were in didn't mean that much anyway.

At my school there are 3 classes and they are split purely on age in Foundation and then the classes are mixed up for year one, taking all factors such as age, gender, ability etc into consideration.

Our school, at one stage listed all the boys in birthday order and went down the list putting them in alternate classes, and then did the same for the girls.
That way they had same winter/summer and boy/girl divide.

I don't know if they still do that though.

When I was at school they did it by age. In my class there were children born between September -February and in the other class it was March - August. I think that was a good idea especially as alot of parents with summer born worry that their child will struggle to keep up especially with children almost a year older than them in the class. I would like to think that these days it's done randomly but still ensuring a good balance of genders, age and SEN. My daughters school have already picked classes..not sure how though

Our school does it by age
The older ones go in the mixed yr1/R
The rest go in reception

Thanks for the replies! I have an August born boy so would prefer grouping by age with autumn dc in one class and summer dc in another, and be mixed again at the end of the year. Will definitely ask the school at the induction meeting then!

I have an August born boy about to go into Reception too gym and I would be a bit gutted if he went into a class split by age. He can already read and write a bit and seems quite good at maths and I want him to be pulled along by seeing kids who can do more than he can.

Do you not think the expectations would automatically be lower in the 'young' class?

I actually didn't like the age classes at DS's school and was much happier once they reshuffled, as much as summer born children are that much younger and might not be as ready as a winter born child, it simply isn't true for everyone.

DS was born in July and the half term he spent in the younger class was completely wasted, where as October born DD probably would of benefited from being in the younger class as she's more babyish. A random mix is a much better idea to me as then whatever level your DC is at there is likely to be someone at the same level.

What do you think he would gain by being in a class which is divided up purely by age? In my opinion it's a very lazy way of dividing children up and can lead to incredibly unequal classes. What if it meant that 3/4 of the class were girls? What if all the children with English with an additional language ended up in that class? What if that class, because of their birthdays, contained all the children with behavioural difficulties? What if all friendship groups were deliberately split? All of the above could happen if you divide a class purely by age.

Mmm all valid points.... I wasn't really thinking about age being used as the only criteria for grouping, gender and SEN are definitely factors too. Wasn't that concerned about the academic side (yet!) but ds is on the small and shy side so was thinking that being with younger children he may have a better time in PE /games/ social side.