Does your school mix classes at the end of reception?

[furrycat]

DS's school is a four-form intake and they mix all the classes at the end of reception to gmake sure the Year One classes are well-balanced. I have mixed feelings about this - is it common practice? Do kids take well to it do you think?

[Marne]

Yes, dd1's school does this, it seems to have worked well in dd's school. Dd1 went up after her first yera (reception) but half of the class stayed with the new reception class.

Next year only 3 reception children are starting so they are mixing year 2, 1 and reception which does worry me a little.

Dd1 was in a mixed class of year 2's and 1's this year and it has been really good for her as she is working with the older children.

[Stinkyfeet]

Ds1 primary is 3 form. The reception classes are divided roughly by Sept-Dec birthdays, Jan-April and May-Aug. Classes stay the same through infants, they are then mixed up when they go into juniors.

Can't comment yet as Ds1 is in Yr2 now, but am interested in how the mixing up goes. I wonder if it's harder when they're younger to be separated from their familiar classmates, or harder 2 years later when the class is very firmly established.

[satc2bringiton]

No - but they used to about 3 years back.

Stay in the same class from recp-Y2 - then get mixed in juniors.

[redskyatnight]

DS's school is 2 form and mixed at the end of Reception. DS got moved into the same class as his friends (who were in the other class) but other friendship groups got split up (as well as the obvious splitting of potential troublemakers they also (e.g.) split a groupg of strong minded, bright girls).

DS now has different friends who are again in the other class so the mixing has not interfered with making of friends. I am actually hoping for another mix from Year 1 to Year 2 but think I'd prefer him to stay in the one class once he gets to Juniors (his infants and another infants feed into a single Juniors so that will be a "big" class change).

[kdk]

My DTs' school does this - 3 form intake and mixed at the end of reception to give a more balanced Y1. Seems to be working well although it caused some upset at the time but as they had mixed the reception classes for the first time (had previously been in classes according to age), needed to be done to get mix of levels/ages/friendships etc.

[DaisymooSteiner]

Our local school mixes up the classes every single year. Has been OK for us (so far) and is basically inevitable because of the way the intake works.

[sunnydelight]

Our two form entry school does this every year through primary. It's just what happens so kids get used to it - no big deal and I think it encourages the whole year to mix.

DS1s first primary on the other hand stayed in the same classes all the way through. By Y5 when he left he still didn't know most of the kids in the "other class".

[biddyofsuburbia]

DS's two form entry school does it at the end of Y1 to prevent everyone (parents/kids) getting cliquey apparently! I don't think it has anything to do with balancing the classes but then who knows how they do it? names in a hat or a discussion about each child? It's a mystery to me but I will accept and get on with it!

[amidaiwish]

no our school is a 3 form entry and doesn't mix them. the 30 kids they start in reception with they stick with.

personally i think a bit of a mix up wouldn't be a bad idea! (dd is in Y1)

[mankyscotslass]

Our school mixes the two classes up at the end of YR2. The children are asked for the names of two pupils they want to be with and one they don't.

They school then attempts to move things around accordingly, although they warn them they can't always have what they want.

Some of us have raised issues about they way they do the remix, but have been told this is how its always been done. So that's ok then.

I'm not against the idea of mixing the classes up per se, in fact I think it's good to rebalance the classes if needed, but I do have to question the method.

TBH, DS has struggled a bit friendship wise this year, but from speaking to friends that are teachers I think that may have more to do with the jump to juniors than anything else.

One of my teaching friends says that at her school they move the classes around every year, and she feels it's a really positive thing.

[lovecheese]

Yes, mixed all the way through from the end of reception. School is 2 form entry, and all the kids know that this is what happens so no big shocks when a is separated from b. However, as well as taking into account abilities/friendships/SEN/troublemakers, the children are asked to make a list of their 3 best friends and the school tries to accomodate this when deciding next years groups, which I think is good.

[THK]

Yes DD school mixing starts in reception.
children asked for 3 names of friends they want to be with and guaranteed 2.

I was the parent in reception nominated to speak with the headmaster as we were all so upset that children had taken a year to settle only to be unsettled however Im now a convert.

It keeps the balance of boy/girls
Balance of ability levels
balance of ethnicity
splits cliques
encourages children to mix with children they otherwise wouldnt have the opportunity to.

IMO more unsettling for parents than children

[RustyBear]

I work in a school (junior) where the classes are mixed every year - the teachers have a slips of all the names in four colours (boys & girls from each of the 2 parallel classes) & the two teachers from each year sort them out according to various criteria - friendships/groups that work well together (not necessarily the same thing ) making sure there's an even spread of ability in each class, placing children with SEN according to availability of TAs etc.

They may take parents' expressed wishes into account, but only if it's possible (one year we had Child A's parents saying please make sure she's with Child B and Child B's parents saying please make sure she's not with Child A....)

It does mean that by the end of junior school all the children know all the others in their year, and are also used to making new friends - the Year 7 tutor at the secondary school says that our children tend to get on much better than those from the other nearest primary, where they are in the same class from reception to Year 6.

[RSCmatriarch]

Some parents at our school have found a way around this yearly form mixing.

If two sets of parents want their daughters, who are best friends, to stay together, each set writes to the Head to request the same form teacher. However, they give reasons other than they don't want the friendship split up, e.g. a sibling had that form teacher and they thought she was really good.

This is not very fair on the parents who are not 'in the know'. The form mixing policy is not on the school's website. I think that the Head should not accept requests for form allocation until after the lists go up and requests should only be granted in extreme circumstances.

It seems there are a number of schools doing this mixing yet schools are reluctant to put down this policy in writing.

On this thread alone, there are a number of different reasons given for this policy. What is going on?

Parents deserve to be told the real reasons for this policy and if it is to be implemented, it should be implemented fairly.

[Hulababy]

I work in a three form intake infant school. The classes remain the same throughout the three years.

[DyslexiaTeach]

This has always surprised me that so few schools near me do this. It was always done in my primary schools as a child, every year, so that we knew the whole year well by the end.

I tutor privately, and many of my pupils are dyslexic, some with behaviour issues. They have sometimes got into unhelpful patterns with others in their class, particularly before it became clear what problems they had. It becomes hard for them to break out of these patterns when they stay in the same class for years, and they end up repeating the behaviours that they might otherwise have moved on from, just because everyone expects it of them.

I can understand the problems with friendships being disrupted, but for us it was not really an issue as we had grown up expecting that to happen, that some years you'd be with someone, other years you wouldn't; each year was an exciting opportunity to see who would be in your class. I thikn it would be different to have that system suddenly imposed on a class that had been together for a while, though. Knowing in advance that that was how it was probably made it a lot easier for us, and we never really considered that there could be an alternative.

[SE13Mummy]

The school I teach at (and where my DD is in Reception) has no set policy on mixing classes; some times it will be done but only if it's felt to be of benefit to that particular group of children. The classes are usually mixed further up the school (high mobility in London can mean the classes become quite unbalanced with some having very few of one gender).

As a teacher I don't have particularly strong feelings either way but then again I've always taught in 'high mobility' schools so classes are rarely the same September-July anyway. As a parent I don't mind either; my DD is quite happy in her class and is doing well but has friends in the parallel class too and is the sort of child whom I suspect would be content whichever class she was in (she doesn't have a single 'best friend' in school but a group in each class that are close friends).

[ProfessorLaytonIsMyLoveSlave]

No, unless total numbers in the year drop sufficiently that they drop from four classes down to three. I think that happens more often moving from Y1 into Y2, though.

[pooka]

DD's school also has no fixed policy. In her year, I think 3 children from each class were swapped to improve the class dynamic. The current yr 1 classes are completely different to the reception classes because there were significant issues to do with behaviour and generally how the classes gelled that made a complete mix a good idea.

I do know of other schools (also 3 or 4 form entry) where the classes are mixed at the end of yr R. Seems to work OK. The main instance I know of is a school where the reception classes are organised according to age, so the oldest children are kept together as September starters and the youngest are similarly put in separate classes in january when they start.

Once the school has a better idea of dynamics, range of abilities and so on, they mix the classes to ensure that they are well-balanced and I suppose to avoid having the older children separate from the younger ones right through to 10 or 11.