Class Organisation

[Royaldada]

How do your DCs schools organise their new class lists - is it by ability, age or friendship groups and how do they move to the new class - do they move the whole class to the new class or do they mix them up with another class.

The reason I ask is because we receive the name of DDs new Yr 2 teacher last week but after talking with some of the other parents it seems that the whole of DDs year 1 class is moving to the same teacher apart from DD and her friendship group (2 girls) and I just wondering why is this the case

Our school do a roughly 50:50 split every year, and try to get a balance of abilities and sexes in each class whilst also trying to keep friends together and split up any kids who need to be split. Just moving a small group sounds like there were problems in one or other class.

In my DS's school they keep the classes the same. I think occasionally if there have been issues they've mixed the classes but generally they move up as a whole.

At ours they mix them every year. They try to give each class an even spread of more challenging dc and abilities. They don't try to keep friends together and I'm sure they will split dc that they thi k need to be separated for any reason. When my dd went into year three she didn't have anyone from her last class. By year 5/6 the children pretty much know everyone anyway.

Ours move around each year.
They have lots of classes and split each class into 10 and then each new class is filled with 10 from 3 different classes.
They're meant to be with at least one from their list. But as they ask them to name 10 children it's great if you get with number 1 or 2, but by the time you get to 10 it's not really much better than random for most children. As a rule of thumb the louder, more confident in friendships you are the more likely you are to stay together.

Having said that I do know of a local school who announced they were mixing up the classes, but when they gave the names out they were literally swapping 2 children from each class. One child had been an issue with another and the suspicion was that they'd gone "oh we can't just move them" so had added another from that class and chosen the ones from the other class to swap with entirely on whose parents wouldn't complain loudly. Dreadful.

Ours change every year in order to encourage new friendship groups but also gives them s chance to split up any issues. We've just had a class list for next year pretty much 50 50 swap.

Ours don't change at all. I think it would be better to mix them up a bit.

Ours didn't mix them but I wished they did. They say they might in future. I'd love ours to be mixed up

DS class mixed in year 5 - worst decision ever made. .. they seemed to put all the naughty kids together who formed a large group - forever being disruptive and falling out - class fights total disaster - parent complaints all year.

Because most schools don't know many (if any) of the dc coming in to Reception, then 2 (or more) classes can end up very uneven, so it's pretty common to want to mix things up a bit by the end of Yr1. All sorts of things get taken into account, but it seems a bit strange to just swap 3 from each class, it's true. However, as you say she is with 2 friends, I can't see that it would be a problem.

Our school mixed them up from Year 2 onwards. In DD's year a number of boys left at 7 to go to single sex preps and after that it was pretty much 2/3 girls to 1/3 boys in all the classes. However the year above DD's actually had more boys than girls by the time they reached Year 4. It varied from year to year as the school shuffled the children around depending on who had left and who had arrived. They were always asked for three names of children they would like to be with. Sometimes they'd get one and sometimes all three.