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!!

The time of year a child is born makes no difference in our class allocations. Children with additional needs (known disabilities and learning challenges, social or behavioural challenges, children for whom English is a second language, and students we know to generally ahead academically) are placed first to try and get a reasonable mix within the classroom. This is based on our meetings or reports from their kindergartens. Then we consider gender to try and have an even split, as well as any preferences the parents may have. We will not use parent requests of child friendships, but we have at times made decisions based on knowing two children may not rub together well or when a parent has expressed an interest such as at times we get single parents requesting their child has a male teacher as their child has little male influence in their life. Classes will then change every year and we have extensive meetings to consider class allocations.

At DS's school most of the reception children had been in the nursery (apart from DS and a couple of others) but the classes seemed to be split fairly evenly across gender, birthdays etc.

When they moved to Y1 his teacher said that they tried to change the classes around, break up some groups, encourage others and still keep an even split of gender, birthday, ability etc.

Sounds like a complete nightmare for the teachers, I don't envy anyone trying to work out that particular jigsaw .

But what if all the other younger children are particularly boisterous/loud/confident?

Age alone really isn't a good way to organise classes. Have a chat with the Reception teachers about your ds's particular needs but don't be concerned if he is in a class which is an equal balance of ages - that's a good thing!

beanandspud - you're right - it is a completely nightmare to do! I've spent about 4 evenings on it so far.

Our is similar to MillyMollyMama. A big space with 60 children in it. They have key groups of 15 each. All seemingly random, girls/boys/ability/age wise.
They assess ability at the start of the year and in week 3 or 4, they divide the 60 into ability groups for phonics, literacy and numeracy. But they still keep their key groups of 15 for carpet time/registration etc. They can move between ability groups depending on their progress but their key groups are the same.