My child is about to go up to year 1 in September and there had been rumours for some time about mixed classes. We were informed that out of the 3 reception classes now, who are split by age, 10 pupils from the youngest class of reception now, going up to year 1, would be mixed with 20 of the oldest reception children coming up this year.
The School arranged a meeting a few days before the new class lists were released and advised that the choices of children had been made with friend groups as a priority. We were also assured that it wasn’t on ability and if your child was in a mixed class then it definately wasn’t keeping them back.
So the lists were released last week on Friday, just before the weekend, giving us a long time to stew over it until Monday. I was told by a couple of friends though that usually the class decisions are released on the last day of term, so no one gets a say, so I suppose we were lucky in that respect.
My child is one of the 10 and the uproar started! I was ok about it until my husband started saying it was keeping our child back, and does that mean they were a candidate to be in a mixed group next year? Some of the parents went to see the head teacher who was actually off on the Monday (that really didn’t look good, but it was a genuine reason). I actually went calmly to see Bradley’s teacher, who asked me my concerns and pretty much put my mind at ease then.
She explained that there was a full time teaching assistant with the class teacher and that our year 1′s would actually be in a ration of 10:1 to the teacher and they would constantly be monitoring other schools in the area and look at how they are doing the classes. I did discuss distractions from the reception year, learning through play, where as our year 1′s are more about learning this year but was assured class time would be prepared with everything in mind.
I did keep my appointment with the head however, and again, she did a good job of reassuring me. I explained that I had done some research and was concerned as to the amount of blogs I had found from teachers asking for help as they didn’t know how to teach reception and year 1 mixed. I was assured that the school would be very supportive. I also asked how the teacher felt about taking a mixed class and was told that when the headteacher announced to the teachers about the move, my son’s new teacher offered to take the class as she had done it successfully before, she also has over 10 years teaching experience.
I wanted to know if the teacher would definately be teaching from 2 curriculums and was assured so. Our year 1 class would be doing the same as the other non-mixed year 1 class, although everyone would be doing different work to eachother as everyone is working to their own ability. So that cleared up another issue I had about repeating reception work. The headteacher said she had seen some good results from mixed classes due to the lower ratios.
There had been a parent outside the school in the morning who had an older child in the juniors and said she had witnesses the mixed reception & year 1 class, 7 years back. She said the parents had been the same then worried etc, and it had worked really really well.
So what do you think? I’m very interested to know. Are you a teacher who has done this before and what did you think? Are you a parent who this is happening to, or has? I would really appreciate your comments. Our child’s education is their future and we can’t afford to get this wrong!