small school organisation - teachers point of view please

[Pitchounette]

Message withdrawn

In a small school there is no option but to have mixed age classes as the intake is too small for one teacher per year group.

However, the class teacher should be leading the majority of the teaching with both year groups. Are you sure the TA is actually fully in charge when she is supervising the other year group? Often it can seem like this when actually the class teacher does the input and teaching and the TA supervises and supports independent activities. I teach year 5/6 and we often do this, but the teaching is delivered by me, or certainly under close instruction.

One other point though...I'm pretty sure that Key Stage 1 classes shouldn't have more than 30 children.

Message withdrawn

It doesn't matter whether she is a HLTA or not she should not be "teaching" a class on a regular basis.

Message withdrawn

Message withdrawn

Message withdrawn

The exceptional circumstances when class sizes can exceed 30 do not allow for part of the class being given into the care of a HLTA or TA for extended periods of time. Yes in exceptional circumstance class sizes can exceed 30 but all children are the responsibility of the class teacher. HLTAs and TAs can cover PPA time which is 10% of the teacher's teaching time and they can also cover for short periods of absence but not as a permanent solution.

There is no reason why Y1 shouldn't have a play/practically based curriculum. It's what I did when I taught a mixed Yr R/1 class. All the children benefited from this hands on, play based, practical, exploratory approach and made excellent progress (Ofsted confirmed this and made special mention of it in their report).

I used to work in a village lower school. We had 53 pupils, and some mixed classes. All classes were below 30 but all had a Qualified teacher at all times.

Reception - 10 children, Teacher
Year 1/2 - 27 children , teacher
year 3/4 - 26 children - two teachers job shared.

It worked very well with mixed ages, the children worked on a 2 year "rolling topic curriculum" so that the children did not repeat the same things two years in a row.

Message withdrawn

I'm not a teacher but if your son is in reception and reading ORT level 3 he is doing very well.
Usually they are still on letter recognition and first phonic blends, so I don't think you have any worries.

We've got about 70 in our school and four full time teaching posts. Biggest class is 2&3 with 25 children.
R/Yr 1
Y2&Y3
Y4&Y5
Y6

It's very tight on the budget, but staffing is seen as the best resource for the school.

I completely agree with this statement from CandleQueen:

"It's very tight on the budget, but staffing is seen as the best resource for the school."

This is how it should be.

Pinouchette - the "peace and quiet" argument is a complete cop out!

Parents not wanting to know is also a complete cop out and no excuse at all. I work in a school where initially, the parents were very wary of talking to the teacher (in case we told them something negative about their child's behaviour). However, my job-share partner and I have perservered and worked incredibly hard to engage with all the parents and keep them up to date with their child's progress and what they can do to support it. The parents are now much more confident about talking to us, because they know that we will tell them positive things most of the time.

Message withdrawn

Sorry but I still think it is wrong to leave half a class with a TA on a regular basis.
I'm a reception teacher and none of my class are still on letter recognition and first phonic blends. I don't use ORT but my children are using songbirds stage 4-6

I agree with mrz. It's just bad organisation as far as I'm concerned. I often have my TA working with a group of children, but it is a small group (max 6 children) and they tend to stay in the classroom. The only time she takes them outside is during guided reading because they go out and play noisy games!

The group she takes changes each session (4 sessions per day), according to which group I'm focussing on after the initial whole class teaching focus.

In my opinion, your child's teacher simply has not understood the basic idea about why mixed age classes work - ie. the cross-over of children in the middle. This means that above-average Reception children should be working with the below average (or even, average) Year 1s. Separating them by age is just silly, and extremely lazy teaching as it means that she's only recognising children by age, and not by their developmental stage or understnading of any particular concept.

It will be interesting to see what Ofsted say when they come in.

Message withdrawn