Weird year group make up, considering moving school

[OhLookHeKickedTheBall]

This may be long, but trying not to drip feed.

To start with I have never been fully happy with the infants school my DC have/are attending, however they've always seemed fairly happy and have done well there so wrote them off as minor niggles or got some resolve on bigger problems.

DD has now moved to Juniors, which is a separately managed school, and is far happier. They've dealt well with some medical problems DD has, in a far better and more understanding way than Infants, so I was thinking I could ride out Infants with DS (now Yr1). But I'm not sure I can now.

The problem we have is not something that is the fault of the school nor is it something they can click their fingers and resolve. His year is predominately female. Didn't seem much of an issue in reception as DS enjoyed interacting with anyone regardless. A few incidents crept in where certain boys in his class would tell him he couldn't play with them if he played with girls, and to give him his due he decided playing with them wasn't worth it (there were also physical fighting issues). Reception teacher was mindful but assured us all would be ok.

Now in Yr1 he's interacting a lot more with the boys as a preference. However we are being called over occasionally by the teacher to discuss DS copying the more poorly behaved boys - their words not mine. DS is getting upset as he gets into trouble when they don't in his eyes, this seems to be a combination of this not being bad behaviour in comparison for them and also because their parents are meeting regularly with school over behaviour whereas they're talking to me only at pick up. His teacher is also aware that he's often doing these things because he's being told to in order to play with them - again something they've told me, not my words.

We're getting increasingly uncomfortable as when we ask why he doesn't play with some of the other boys he says he can't because they're in Boy1s team, or they're in Boy2s team. Again the issue of being told not to play with the girls has been brought up.

I'm sort of lost for ideas of how to work with the school on this which obviously is what we'd prefer to do, but we are seriously considering looking at moving DS to a school where there's a better mix of girls and boys.

If anyone has any suggestions I'd be very grateful.

If you move your child, then when it comes to moving onto the junior school you might well have an issue in getting a place if you are not at the infant school which is a feeder school. You need to check that out and also if you thinking of moving what the reality is terms of getting to two different schools potentially at the same time.
That is not helping in terms of the school but may mean you need to consider the only sensible might be to stick with the infant school. In that case I think the answer is in trying to encourage the school to sort out what has obviously become a number of different groups being formed in the cohort. The school can't really stop the different groups forming in the playground but they can stop the "gangs" from getting too boisterous in the playground. Another possibility is asking the school to consider setting up a buddy system which would potentially allow other groups of pupils to be formed

If we don't move him, this will be his year group throughout Juniors too. They're only really fed by this Infants. Its an odd set up though with completely separate management. So really if we leave him throughout Infants, this may still be a problem in Juniors no matter how impressed I am with how they've been with DD. Plus logistically two schools would be a pain though we're torn with leaving DS as it benefits DD, potentially moving DD from a good place to benefit DS or trying to figure out how to make it work. If we leave DS the biggest hope is that Juniors will shuffle the classes enough to break the dynamic, but they sometimes don't which makes it a gamble. So I'd rather work with the schools TBH.

Infants have also changed their system so that all the years are segregated at playtimes, when previously they mixed Yr1 and Yr2. The old system may have helped more with giving more options of others to interact with.

A buddy system may not be a bad idea to suggest to them though, definitely not something I'd have thought of before.