Mixed class of YR/Y1/Y2?

[SmaugMum]

Full disclosure: civilian and not teacher here!

If you can forgive the imposition, I’d be incredibly grateful for some feedback (i.e. pros vs cons) of my DD2’s school’s plan to mix her class into a YR/Y1/Y2 form from September ‘21? There will be 20 children in total and my DD will be entering Y1.

Honestly, it makes me feel a bit nervous as it will be three academic years with the same teacher (who, as a fairly introverted person, seems to not enjoy my (very) extraverted daughter in her class) and I’m wondering if most of the focus will be on helping the Y2 children achieve their SATs targets?

Is this a reasonable stretch across three academic years for a primary teacher?

Is the school very small? Otherwise I can't see a reason to do this.

If it is a small school and a usual arrangement the teacher will be skilled at delivering the curriculum across the 3 year groups.

There are no more Y2 SATs, if that helps your worry, there will still be the Y1 phonics check.

I've done it, it's hard but lovely. The Y2s really bring the younger children on. The Y1s can access some of the Y2 work if they need an extra challenge. Ultimately being in a class of 20, any class of 20, is much better than a class of 30. It's not unusual for children to be working across an age range of 5+ years in any primary class anyway (so some children at a 3 year old level, some at 8 year old's level for example) so teachers are used to setting very different tasks. Without a doubt I'd put my own children in the mixed class I taught, in fact I'd actively choose it over many other KS1 set ups.

My DDs both had this in their small village primary school. For DD2 it was great, for DD1 it was wonderful. She hated learning through play so her amazing teacher put her with y1 for reading/writing and y2 for maths. DD spent her primary school working with the year above and is now completing her Masters at Cambridge.