Large class split and streamed by ability

Cat Melodeon

I was hoping some of you involved in primary education might be able to give me some advice. I'm trying to help out a friend.

A rural primary school has had a problem with an extra large class (26) in a school where 8-12 pupils per class is the norm. Through the years, the class has been split, first alphabetically, then by age, then by lottery.

In September the class will be moving into 5th. Again, splitting was required - this has been known all along - and a letter was sent out the week before term end informing parents that it would again be by age. One parent kicked up an enormous fuss as her child has repeatedly been assigned to the smaller split group. As a result, the principal changed tactics and announced at a general meeting that this year the children would be streamed according to their STEN scores of the past 3 years with the weakest 8 remaining behind with this year's teacher.

Parents protested but the principal allowed no argument and said the BOM/Parents' Council were in agreement. This was 2 days before the end of term when the BOM etc were unavailable and teachers were unable to find time to discuss the consequences of the decision with parents, who were dismissed with the line 'it's Department policy'.

We have since learned that the Parents' Council/BOM were at no stage consulted and that this decision was solely made by the principal. At the point where the parents of the 8 were informed, booklists etc had been printed (the 8 will be using different books to the rest of 5th class) so there clearly was no intention on the principal's part to allow discussion or review of his decision.

That the 'weaker' pupils are remaining with this year's teacher is already known by the other pupils. On the last day of school they were taunted by other pupils that they were 'staying back', 'too thick for 5th', 'the spastic class' etc. This taunting has since continued at sports training and social events. Some of the children concerned are distraught; all of the parents are upset, most particularly by the way the decision was communicated and the refusal of the school to discuss the matter since.

Everyone understands that resources are scarce and that the class must be split, but the manner in which it has been handled is insensitive, has caused emotional distress to the children and exposed them to stigmatisation and bullying. Not one of the parents would have objected if their child had been selected by lottery/age/any criteria other than openly labelling them as 'weak'.

I thought this type of policy had long died a death in Irish primaries. Is there anyone who could give me any advice at all?

Is streaming by ability allowed?
Should the BOM/Parents' Council be consulted by the principal on such decisions?
Is there any right to appeal?
Is this in contravention of the 'child-centred approach' to planning required by the dept?
Most pertinently, this exposes children to bullying. Is there any way to invoke the anti-bullying code?

Is this simply a matter for the principal's discretion with no input or right to appeal allowed for parents?

E.T.

As far as I'm aware the Department don't issue any official guidelines on splitting classes.

In this case it seems that consulting with the Parents' Association may have allayed some of the problem, but with a parent kicking up as you've said, so late in the term, there may not have been time. If the BOM were unavailable then the principal couldn't consult them on the matter, and would have had to make the decision themselves as seems to have happened.

Your friend could write a formal letter of complaint to the BOM, but as I've said above, the Department won't give guidelines to schools on splitting classes, so I don't know how far any complaints would get. It mightn't be any harm just to have their unhappiness with the situation on record.

"Child-centred approach" - this is a bad joke at this stage. Class sizes have been raised, grants and funding cut, resource hours cut, SNAs not being allocated fairly. It's a bit rich for the government to mouth off about a child-centred approach while making it harder and harder for schools to do this all the time. Classes are being split more and more due to the rise in pupil-teacher ratio so it's very hypocritical for the government to say that we need to provide a child-centred approach when they're the ones making it more difficult.

We've had problems in the past with splitting classes, there's just no way to keep people happy. There was a post about this recently with a parent querying why the same classes are split throughout their time in school. The basic answer is that because of that particular class size, a school will have to constantly split them to ensure that each teacher ends up with a manageable (and more child-centred!) group in numbers.

Splitting by educational ability may work in some ways, but you could have an extremely bright child with low social ability who may struggle in an older class grouping. Splitting by age may mean that an older child who is weak educationally ends up in an older class grouping, and a younger child who is academically strong ends up in a lower class grouping. Splitting arbitrarily eg by surname or roll-number can lead to all of the problems above. There really is no ideal solution.

There is just no fair way of splitting classes unfortunately, and it's a massive headache for teachers throughout the country. If a school does allow parents to pick and choose which class their children are in, the system would just be unworkable.

If it happens once, then it can't be stopped in the future. You could have parents deciding they don't want their child in a particular class because there's a pupil with special needs (I've unfortunately come across this a number of times), or because their best friend is in the other class etc etc.

The anti-bullying policy is there to protect pupils and staff in cases of bullying, and to describe how the school uses best practice to prevent bullying. You could say that any type of splitting exposes children to bullying, pupils could be told they're the babies, or the tag-alongs, if someone is a bully they'll find ammunition whatever the case. I'm not really sure if it's an appropriate slant to raise because I'd feel that it draws more attention to the fact that the children with lower STENs are in the lower half of the split.

Personally I think that splitting by age or roll-number is the simplest option, it's not up to anybody's opinion and nobody can argue that their child is being treated unfairly when it is completely arbitrary. The school should have a policy on it though, and once parents have enrolled their child they've agreed to the policy. It makes things much easier.