Talk:Drawbacks of Age-Based Segregation

Mixed-age classes

Marvin asked about mixed age classes. They're not that uncommon in the UK. Sometimes it's because the school is quite small & so there aren't enough teachers for each age group to have their own class (I did a teaching practice in a school like that - it was a small, rural primary. The class had 13 children ranging from 7-11; so, normally 4 classes). In other school, however, they have parallel mixed year classes; so it's not just due to lack of children/teachers. It gets mixed reactions: http://www.ioe.ac.uk/multigrade/fulltext/fulltextBerrymixedage.pdf The class that I taught seemed to work well; however, there are several considerations ... most of the children were related to at least one other; it was in the pre-National curriculum days - before the UK Government got very keen on testing (and teachers started teaching to the test, rather than teaching to the interests of the class...)