Year 2 Teacher moving down to Year 1

[Royaldada]

Having received the names of the new class teachers for next year I've noticed that my DD's current Yr 2 teacher is moving down back to Yr 1. I can understand why they would want to move her to either Reception or Yr 3/4 so that can she have more experience in either EYFS or KS2 but why move her down a lower year in the same key stage

The teacher may be particularly good with children who need XXX and the school know that a child is moving up that would benefit from XXX.

How can you even be vaguely bothered to think about this? It is absolutely none of your business? Do people wonder in such depth about a minor detail of other jobs, like 'ooh, Fred's moved off the meat counter to the bakery section! Wonder why that is? Must have been caught stealing the meat! I'll ask the store manager. It's my right to know. I once bought meat from Fred AND I bought a doughnut last week from Jane and she didn't even tell me about it!'

Our schools has key stage specialists, EYFS, KS1, lower KS2 and upper KS2. We work on a rolling programme of two years, instigated a few years ago.

Each year will have the one teacher for the two years of that key stage, and then they go back to the start again.

Teachers move around for all sorts of reasons, you make it sound as if you think she's being demoted it won't be that at all. I know of a couple of schools where teachers do 2 years with the same class, so year 1 then year 2 then back to year 1 again. This is good for ks1 sats as they have continuity throughout ks1.

'you make it sound as if you think she's being demoted'
^this! I'm going to be wondering if parents think we have suspicious reasons for any movement when the class lists are announced now.

Maybe she prefers Y1 and asked to teach there next year?

It's good for a teacher's CV to show experience in a wide range of year groups. It could also be that someone in Y1 is leaving and they want to move an experienced teacher in there; she might be being promoted to year head. As people say, all sorts of reasons.

As a teacher, I frequently came across parents who genuinely thought a move to teaching the older pupils meant you had been promoted. Just to set the record straight, it doesn't. Within a school, teachers will be in different salaries but these have nothing to do with the age of their pupils. Promotions are given for additional responsibilities such as managing an area of the curriculum.

Maybe she's sick of Sats and they don't want to lose a good teacher.

It's not a demotion. Younger does not equal easier.

How can you even be vaguely bothered to think about this? It is absolutely none of your business? Do people wonder in such depth about a minor detail of other jobs, like 'ooh, Fred's moved off the meat counter to the bakery section! Wonder why that is? Must have been caught stealing the meat! I'll ask the store manager. It's my right to know. I once bought meat from Fred AND I bought a doughnut last week from Jane and she didn't even tell me about it!'

Superb post!

When I moved from teaching KS1 to KS2 , or infants and juniors as it was then , a number of parents congratulated me, and said my promotion was long overdue! unfortunately this attitude is not confined to parents, many (mostly secondary, but not all) teachers think that teaching in a sixth form is a sign of more advanced and praiseworthy. teaching skills than teaching in KS1.

I once went to a maths association conference where the president of the association was booed when she said that she was always impressed by the amount of maths she saw in early years classrooms , how children were engaged and learning, and how sad it was that this enthusiasm often disappeared in secondary schools....

I've seen 2 interpretations of teachers moving from one stage to another. Firstly that the "better" teachers taught the older classes and secondly that the longer a teacher had been in a school, the better a teacher they were. So a colleague who had taught nothing but P7 for 34 years must have been absolutely brillian