How are reception classes worked out?

[mackintoshmaster]

In a two form entry school?

I was surprised to find all my sons peers going to our local school from a private nursery (about 6) were in the other class, as well as a couple of others I knew.

Probably random coincidence or do they look at setting that early?

How would they set them? It will be random, although boy:girl split and age range likely to play a part.

It will be friendship groups not setting

They would have talked to the nursery before deciding, that's what usually happens

I will be however the school decide. Any of the answers given so far might be correct, or something entirely different. You'll only know if you ask them directly.

Our school try to do even numbers of boys and girls in each class and a good mix of ages, so one class doesn't have all the august babies etc.

Not much thought given to nursery friendship groups at all.

They will split nursery groups though. In DD2's year about 11 children transferred from her nursery, they were split between the classes, however, they were an unusual year group as there were 27 siblings admitted in a year group of 60

There were 7 children from our private nursery went to the same school, including my twins. All except my DS were put in the same class. But he didn't really care as was more bothered about playing with the new toys!

Ours are worked out to give as much balance as possible in terms of boy/girl, age, ability (and possibly more). The reception teachers visit every nursery/preschool that has a child going onto our school and discusses each child with the nursery staff. It would probably be 5 or 6 nurseries as it is a rural area. They try to place all children with a few children they know from nursery. This either mean so they split them between the classes evenly because there are lots from that setting or they put them all in one class because there aren't very many coming from there.

So I'd say that they are just putting those 6 together because they know each other and nothing more sinister than that.

It's interesting to see that nursery friendships do seem to continue well into school as well as new friendships develop. It has made me rethink how I approach the preschool year for my DD2 to ensure that she has a good range of relationships before starting school.

Our infant used to do:
List girls by age, list boys by age.
Go down each list alternating classes.

About 1/2 to 3/4 of the children came from 2 local preschools. In dd1's year all from her preschool except 2 went into her form (and one was a twin so automatically separated) and from the other preschool they had one in their form and the rest in the other.
That wasn't the only year that it happened that all except one, or even all from one preschool went into the same class in the 9 years I was associated with the school, although it didn't happen to both preschools again.

A bit of an aside but schools shouldn't be automatically separating twins. Twins need to be treated as individuals not have a blanket policy to always be separated/together.
Some twins benefit from being together as they start school. Some are better apart. Each child needs to be looked at individually and the parents asked their preferences.
Research from TAMBA shows a lot of benefit from keeping them together on entry to Reception but parents knowledge of the individual children is key.

Also they may split children with the same name - 3fe here and each class has an Amelia, an Emily, a Dylan, an Abdul... Also language groups are split, but the class with the TA who is an expert in language acquisition seems to have a bunch of kids with SLTs - not sure if that's abovevaverage though.

Thanks for replies. Don't know if I'll be a pushy parent to ask - if they asked the nursery I know they'd have said ds was very close to a little girl in particular since 18 mo and at least one other. I'm a teacher but not in that setting so don't want to be that fussy parent! But trying to work out if it matters.

I know there might be non takers so I don't know whether to ask or not. On the other hand ds has been known to compare his (lesser) writing skills with the girls so might be a good thing!

They all mix up in reception and I think stream in y1 for lit and num so probably not an issue.

I guess we've all been taking about which school they're going to and with who so feel bad they're different classes.

You can ask -.I know children shuffled before admission, however after admission it didn't happen in the school I know. If you don't ask then they won't consider doing it because they just won't think about it. I wouldn't make a big fuss though and they do soon settle and make new friends.

Ours have done it on age. My son is split from some of his nursery friends.

Ours was alphabetical with a few children shifted around to make boy/girl split equal

We try to sort classes so that each EYFS teacher ends up with a fairly even split of boys/girls, summer borns, PP, known SEN, medical needs etc

Two of your posts have mentioned setting/streaming-that's something that wouldn't be on my radar if my child was at pre school! I say that as a teacher whose children all ended up at grammar school.

In my DS's class when he started reception there were 3 boys with the same name and 3 girls with the same or very similar names. None in the other class. You'd think they'd at least have put one of each in another class. So I'm not convinced it's always carefully thought about. How on earth would you stream/set four year olds anyway?

AFAIK our school mix children to allow the greatest diversity in each class in reception.
Teachers visit all the nurseries and do home visits to meet incoming children, and the class lists are based on a number of factors, including personality, ability ( can they dress themselves, etc) and to try to get an even split of boys/girls. They will also try not to have several children with the same or very similar names all in the one class intake.

Thanks, they start streaming in year 1

Why would you send a child to a school that streams in year 1?!

Or do you actually mean setting?