Episode 60: How to plan your curriculum for mixed aged classes in primary school

Caroline: Welcome to The Curriculum, a podcast by Cornerstones Education. Here we discuss all things curriculum, plus leadership issues, teaching tips, and much, much more. Hello, everyone. It’s Caroline here. Before we start the podcast, I just wanted to say that we did record it over the internet, so the sound quality might be a bit off at times, but it is a great conversation and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Okay, so it’s on with the podcast. Hi, Lesley.

Lesley: Hi, Caroline.

Caroline:  Hello. Welcome to the podcast. It’s nice to talk to you during school lockdown due to the coronavirus, unfortunately. So we’re doing this over Zoom. The sound quality isn’t going to be the same as it is in the studio, but I’m pleased to be talking to Leslie to come and talk to me about age planning and mixed age curriculum planning, which is a huge topic, isn’t it, at the moment? And it is, of course is quite a few challenges, though. We’ll get cracking with the questions. See if we can offer some guidance to listen. Before we do, though, could you tell me a little bit about yourself, Leslie, and your role with cornerstones?

Lesley: Yes, sure. I’m a retired teacher. I had 34 years experience in primary schools. 15 of those were as a head teacher. I’ve worked in inner city and suburban schools, primaries and academies, and I started my career all those years ago by teaching in a special school teaching SEN pupils. So I used cornerstones in my own school and it’s very early days and I’ve worked as an adviser with Cornerstone since my retirement and that has involved me getting into schools, helping leaders and teachers, delivering training with curriculum design. And I also do some writing of projects. I absolutely love being involved in school, still working with teachers and leaders on curriculum, and after all these years, I still miss contact with the children.

Caroline: I think once you’re once a teacher or as a teacher.

Lesley: I think so.

Caroline: Now I suppose anyone who’s taught or led a school that has mixed-age classes will know. There are so many challenges with that arrangement. There are obviously benefits as well, and we can come on to them with some careful planning and teacher expertise. You can overcome these obstacles, can’t you, Leslie?

Lesley: Absolutely, yes. And many, many schools are doing it as we speak.

Caroline: How prevalent is it, do you think?

Lesley: I mean, it’s always been there. And I think back in 2002, DFA research show that there were about one in four primary schools in England with mixed age classes on their roll. We work with nearly 3000 schools and we feel as advisors going into schools and dealing with them that this number has probably increased, and have organised themselves in a hugely varied set of ways. Personally, I come across very many schools where there are mixed-aged classes. They’re necessary and I think this is partly because I’m based in the Northeast and I cover rural areas such as Durham, North Yorkshire and Sunderland, where you tend to get lots of small schools where mixed-age classes are very often seen. And the smallest one I’ve worked with was one that had only 19 children from reception to six, all in the same class. Of course, there are areas all over the country, not necessarily rural, where you can find schools with mixed-aged classes and the decision to organise a school in this way it can be done for a variety of reasons, could be financial, pedagogical, but it often has a lot to do with the size of the school, the location and of course the big issue of funding.

Caroline: Of course. Yeah, I think people know what mixed age obviously what it means, but what does it mean in practice? Because there are different types, aren’t there?

Lesley: Absolutely. There are many, many different types of mixed-age teaching. Obviously, the most prevalent is the single teacher having more than one year group of children in the same classroom. And as I mentioned earlier, that’s often found in very small primary schools. But mixed age classes can also occur in bigger primary schools because of a fluctuating or uneven enrolment. So you might get very small numbers of children in one year group and very large numbers of children in another group. In the very smallest schools mixed-face teaching is also quite common and that can lead to additional organisational issues around delivering a curriculum that suits everybody. And I think it’s worth mentioning that although a mixed age provision is generally born out of administrative or financial necessity, some schools may choose it for other reasons, such as beliefs about pedagogy. Some leaders and teachers feel that teaching mixed edge classes helps older children develop responsibility as they’re helping their younger classmates. They believe that it creates a really lovely family atmosphere, and I’ve seen that in schools myself. It does, you know, with younger children and older children working alongside each other. And a lot of teachers and leaders also believe that being taught alongside older children helps those younger children rise to challenges. So there are different reasons for doing it and lots of different types of mixed classes.

Caroline: Would you be able to tell us some of the different types that you have seen and which are the most common may be?

Lesley: It used to be, I think, that the single phase or year one, year two and three or four year five or six group together was the most common. But I think nowadays I’m certainly seeing in my work with schools many more schools that have got mixed phase classes as well. So and that is requiring quite complex organization for curriculum delivery.

Caroline: Just in case people listening don’t know what that means. What is mixed phase?

Lesley: Well, mixed phase is when you have children from different key stages working alongside each other. So, for example, you’d have perhaps a reception year one and year two class where you’ve got children working on the EYFS curriculum and children working on the key stage one curriculum. And then very often it mixes like a year, two group of children working with year three. Now the curriculum is different, the end points are different for those key stages and phases because of the way that the curriculum is organised. So that can be much more complex.

Caroline: Yeah, of course you’ve mentioned that small school of only 19, but. But have you seen other complex mixed age set ups?

Lesley: Actually just, just been dealing with two lately and trying to help them with their curriculum design. One of them had an idea for a year, one year to set up and then a year, two year three class and then a year four or five and six class. And another one had it a completely different set-up, which was just as complex. Both of them needed to alter the curriculum, and make it bespoke to their particular setup. Another, of course, can be that the requirements and the restrictions and the challenges for schools can change year on year. So one of the schools I had, had a particular set up for September coming up and then knew that their intake would change for the next year and would have a different set up. So you’ve got to try and factor in all of these different variables.

Caroline: Yeah, it’s listening to a school, a school’s needs and as you say, they can change from year to year.

Lesley: And that’s the most difficult thing when that happens.

Caroline: Yeah. Are there compromises that schools have to make?

Lesley: Yes, I think whatever the setup they have, there’s a general acceptance that mixed-age classes require some form of compromise and some form of adaptation. And I think if given the choice, most schools, but not all, as we mentioned, would much rather not organise their classes in this way. Budgetary constraints and small numbers on role just make mixed-age classes the most practical solution. So yes, there are compromises and I think the main one is that schools teaching in this way have to find ways of creating a curriculum which allows them to teach the national curriculum in a coherent way and covers all of the elements that exist for each key stage and sometimes phase or sometimes year group, for example, in science that the national curriculum dictates. And that means that sometimes in mixed age classes, teachers do need to adapt and modify programmes of work for individuals and groups or sometimes, well, always really that they’ve got to accept that full coverage of the programmes of study for these groups can’t be achieved until the end of the rolling programme or cycle that they’ve got in place. Instead of teachers who are working in single age groups can feel they’ve got to their end points by the end of the year. So I think that is a huge, huge compromise. And teachers can also be concerned about the progression of various age groups through the curriculum, and that’s why it’s helpful actually to have a clear progression of knowledge and skills that they can work through and identify right at the very beginning. And I think that’s where a lot of schools using curriculum Maestro finding it helpful because they have support in that work of planning out and the content and pitching the content and ensuring that the coverage is there, even if it does get completed at the end of a key stage rather than the end of a year group.

Caroline: Yeah. So having those endpoints, that progression of skills and knowledge, you can keep track of them depending on their ability and age range.

Lesley: Absolutely. If they’ve got that framework there, then they can use that to make sure that every child is getting the teaching that they need and the input that they need and goes through at their own pace because they know what’s gone before and they know what’s coming after for each child.

Caroline: Yeah. So it’s important that the curriculum is often called the progression model. So it’s a child’s journey through that curriculum. So as long as you know what journey you want them to take, it’s easier then to know where each child or each group of children are on that journey.

Lesley: And you know, in terms of mixed age classes, that can be really, really useful because you could have some children, younger children, say, in a mixed age class who are actually capable of being stretched and having that skills and knowledge framework allows you to look forward and to think, well, what would come next for this child?

Caroline: Yes, definitely. I was talking to Mary Meyer yesterday and she was talking about the way we think about the curriculum offer that we’re giving children is to not dumb down.

Lesley: Exactly and I think that proponents of mixed edge teaching would say that that is one of the big advantages that those younger children can access, what older children are accessing and perhaps, you know, rise to that challenge. And that is important, whether it’s a mixed age class or whether it’s not that underlying framework is really, really important because children learn at different rates.

Caroline: So are there any other advantages, in a mixed age provision?

Lesley: I think teachers who are in that situation would say that there is an advantage by children being taught by the same teacher for longer because that does happen in mixed-age classes. Teachers will have the same children for two years, perhaps or even longer sometimes, so they know their children really, really well. And that’s a distinct advantage for teachers and for children, I think, as well. And I think also it means that the curriculum planning is in place for longer. So if you’ve got a rolling programme, you’re not likely to be changing your projects and your themes and so on or even your ways of teaching, because we all know that teachers teach in different ways. So in a mixed-age class there’s consistency in teaching as well. So yeah, there are some, there are some advantages.

Caroline: Yes. Yeah. Okay. So let’s talk about the management side of things. Now, obviously, it’s crucial if you’re going to do the mixed-age approach that you make it a success.

Lesley: It can be done, but it does require foresight and good organisation by leaders. But it also and we mustn’t underestimate this, that it also demands a high level of teacher skill to put that organisation into process and to deal with it in the classroom. What leaders need to do is to look at creating rolling programmes that deliver the required content of the national curriculum. And bear in mind that that becomes increasingly complicated as the age mix becomes more extensive. So, for example, a class of that class of children aged between 5 and 11 is obviously trickier to plan for than a mixed year, one year two class. But whichever mixes you’ve got, it does require that sort of sitting down and thinking carefully about what aspects of the national curriculum you are going to teach, when you’re going to teach them and what that experience will look like for the children. And of course, that challenge is exacerbated by the structure of the national curriculum itself, with programmes of studies being organised in different ways for groups, for phases or key stages and so forth. And the subjects have all got their different requirements, haven’t they, in that respect? So there’s a lot of thinking to be done before you actually create the curriculum to make sure that it is fit for purpose in a mixed age class.

Caroline: Yeah, so you go into schools all the time. Lesley, What do you offer as the solution to these challenges and what advice do you give them?

Lesley: Well, I think the first thing I always say to teachers is that they’ve got to be reassured. They’ve got to reassure themselves that the national curriculum does allow for children to be taught aspects which are outside their chronological age so that they don’t have to worry about, I’ll read from a quote here “schools are, however, only required to teach the relevant programme of study by the end of the key stage. And within each key stage, schools, therefore, have the flexibility to introduce content earlier or later than set out in the programme of study. Schools can introduce key stage content during an earlier key stage of appropriate.” So I think that’s the first thing that I say to schools, that as long as the curriculum is fit for purpose for the children that you’re teaching, they don’t need to worry about that aspect. And then really the need to make sure that the plans enable all the children in their teaching to make progress, regardless of their age and regardless of their ability. And that’s where we go back to that clear skills and knowledge progression framework that’s got to underpin the curriculum and staff have to know that they can use this to plan each child’s journey through the curriculum that they’ve created. You know, I always advise teachers to think about their endpoints differently than if they were a teacher of a single-aged class. They’ve got to think about their endpoints at the end of their rolling programme or the end of a phase or the end of a key stage, as long as they continually assess their children’s progress against the year, group expectations and against that skills and knowledge progression, they’ll be fine.

Caroline: Because they’ll all be working towards the end. Because any points are just points. But you have to do progression towards that. And I suppose what we’re saying then is that over maybe two or three years children will reach certain endpoints earlier than others.

Lesley: Yes. And I think by careful monitoring of where they are and what they have achieved and that is more reassuring if you know you’re using that progression framework to track what they’re doing and where they are, then you have got that reassurance that they are on that journey to their endpoint.

Caroline: Thank you for that. Actually, can I just ask you whether you’ve seen any schools that have gone through Ofsted already who have mixed-age classes and have done well with that?

Lesley: Yes, I have. The school I spoke about earlier that’s got the 5 to 11 in one classroom, they had an inspection and she could clearly demonstrate that all of the children in that class, that school, were accessing the curriculum that was relevant to them. And that meant sometimes that she was teaching common themes but teaching them in different ways to different children. So, she would be using the project as entry points, but children would be looking at those themes and those projects in different ways depending on what they needed to get out of them for their age and their ability. Yeah, but, but there are others. I mean, there are there are several schools that I could point to. Obviously, I’m not going to name them now, but there are several schools who have gone through inspections and who have come out the other side with very, very positive comments about curriculum in a mixed age setting. And it can be done because it’s about like I think you mentioned earlier, it’s about the quality of that curriculum, the appropriateness of it to the children in the class and the learning that’s taking place. So, yes, we’ve got lots of examples of that with schools that we work with throughout the country.

Caroline: If schools ever want to find out about other schools who use cornerstones and have had Ofsted do things successfully, can they just contact the office? Is that something that we can do?

Lesley: Exactly. Caroline Yes, we can. Obviously we don’t want to inundate headteachers with lots and lots of visits. We have some very kind and very supportive headteachers in schools where they have mixed age classes and they are happy to receive telephone calls or even visitors.

Caroline: That’s really useful because I’m just thinking of a school who maybe has to, like you said at the beginning, who’s got a new cohort and has to do differently. And it’s maybe they’ve not done it for a while or it’s a new headteacher and they’ve never done it before. It might be quite nice to see how another school is doing it, although you do as schools advisors, you’re always available, aren’t you, to talk through curriculum with a school.

Lesley: Yes, we are. And we’ll, we’ll work with schools to create a bespoke curriculum for their own context. And we do that all the time. But, you know, we are very grateful for very generous headteachers and schools who are willing to take the time and share their expertise and their experiences with their colleagues and it’s always wonderful. I know how busy it is in schools and still we’ve got people who are willing to do that. So that is brilliant.

Caroline: Fantastic. Okay. So now we mentioned schools using cornerstones. What advice do you give them? How do you start working with them?

Lesley: Well, the first thing I always say to them is, don’t worry, there is a solution to whatever context you’re working in. And we can together we can resolve it. I think that the most difficult part of designing any curriculum is working out coverage of the national curriculum, making sure that you’ve got every aspect covered, and then working out how you’re going to progress through it, what the skills and knowledge are at each stage, how are you going to fit in those wider learning concepts? We call them big ideas or golden threads that sort of interweave through your curriculum and are repeated and lend coherence to it, and then also how you’re going to resource all of these fabulous projects that you’ve created. So when we’re thinking about those aspects, I always say to cornerstones Maestro schools, don’t worry, because we’ve got your back on this bit. We’ve done that for you really. And then you just have to use what we have created in a way that suits you best.

Caroline: Yeah. And they can take on the models because you’ve got these curriculum models haven’t we now on Maestro, which look fantastic and that’s for mixed age or single age classes. Those units can be edited as well.

Lesley: Yes, and I think that’s really part of the cornerstones philosophy, isn’t it, that schools have got to create their own bespoke curriculum and use the tools that we can provide for them to make it exactly match what their needs are. There’s no one size fits all. And as you said, Caroline, you can adapt the models that we provide, although they do provide a fantastic starting point for schools to start from scratch is very, very difficult. What I always say to schools when I’m introducing curriculum Maestro to them is that it is a toolbox and it does all of the background work, all of the coverage and the progression grids. And then what it does is it leaves the teachers free to do what teachers do best, which is to translate all of that into really exciting, engaging lessons with the children that they know so well and then be secure in the knowledge that they can do that. They can be free to do that because there’s an underlying structure and organisation that supports it.

Caroline: You can picture it by viewing the progression in a lesson, can’t you? I saw the other day when I had a Maestro you can go into a lesson and there’s a button where you literally press it. You can see what what the previous and the subsequent knowledge skills outcomes are.

Lesley: That’s our view progression feature, which is absolutely invaluable for teachers in mixed-age classes. So if they’re teaching a say, a year five project to a year four or even a year three child, they can actually look at the programme of study in the project, which is a year five programme of study, and they can click this little button as you described and they can look back to see what the matching content would be for a year.

Caroline: That’s fantastic.

Lesley: Yeah, they can just pop that into their lesson plan if they want to.

Caroline: So we’ve mentioned Skills and Knowledge Framework, the adaptable rolling programme models that are now on so you can pick those if you want and work with those as a starting point or offers really good coverage for more complex arrangements, then you could talk to someone like you, couldn’t you, Leslie? If you’re in the area you deal with. But we have lots of Leslie’s, don’t we?

Lesley: We do.

Caroline: So what’s another tool that you recommend for mixed-ages classes?

Lesley: I think one of the really difficult things is to just check that you have actually got coverage of the whole of the national curriculum in each of the subjects. It’s absolutely a daunting task to sort that out. And we have a tool called a detailed coverage analysis, which allows you to see exactly where each part of the programme of study for each subject is taught. You can see in which projects it’s taught and you can even drill down and see which lessons those bits of the programme of study are taught in at the click of a button, which just allows you as a teacher to see what’s being taught and where it should be taught, but also as leaders to check that you have got that coverage and it’ll show you any gaps that have been in your curriculum design, for example, because sometimes it’s difficult to put all of the pieces of the jigsaw together and come up with a complete picture. And there are little pockets where you perhaps have not covered them. So that feature allows schools to do that and to clearly see where they’ve got coverage and if they’ve got full coverage. So that’s another really useful tool.

Caroline: That’s really good for the mixed stage teachers, but it’s very, very good for subject leaders and curriculum leaders who who may be at first concerned about that approach. And they’ve got that overview then of where the gaps are. And you can assign gaps. That’s right, isn’t it?

Lesley: Yeah, you can assign gaps. So you can do it in various ways. For example, if you’ve got a very sort of small gap, something like weather in key stage one, you can assign that to a specific activity or even lesson for a year one class, and that will appear in the teachers curriculum design for year one so that they know they’ve got to teach that. But you can also assign a particular gap to a project that you’re already doing that you’ve already got in your curriculum design where it fits. And then quite often we have a gap in a particular aspect of science, you can create a little science project which you can then do in a Science Week, for example. So to be able to assign those gaps so that you don’t get to the end of the year as you described, or the end of your rolling programme for mixed age classes and find that you’ve missed out. Key areas the children needed to have covered.

Caroline: That’s very poignant for this time that we’re talking. I’m sure there’s lots of leaders concerned about gaps and disparity between different children and what they’ve been doing. So something like the detailed coverage analysis can really help with that.

Lesley: And also, Caroline, I think you were talking about children missing school. There’s another feature which we haven’t mentioned, which is about actual coverage. So within curriculum Maestro, there’s a feature where when lessons have been taught, teachers register that there have been taught with the click of a button and then both they and leaders can see that what they’d intended to be taught had actually been taught. And that’s a very useful feature, which at the moment would yield lots of information about the gaps that children have got because of this extended absence that’s been enforced on them. All the projects that we’ve got thinking about mixed age classes again, have got very wide appeal. So, you know, you could be teaching it five or six projects said burps, bottoms and bile, the digestive system. But that project is so engaging and so appealing, it would appeal to year three, year four, year five and six children. So the themes are appealing as well, and that makes it helpful when you’re teaching in a mixed age class. And then the last thing really is those hundreds and thousands of high quality resources that we provide, many of which can be adapted for different levels of access. So if you have got those wide ranges of children within your class, you can use those editable resources to make them bespoke for the children. If they can’t access the text in one of the resources, teachers can create a similar resource that has got appropriate text in it as well. So there’s lots and lots of features that can help teachers with next edge classes.

Caroline: Thank you for explaining all of that. It’s time to finish the podcast, but I could talk to you for a long time about all sorts of things, not just stage classes, but if you’re lucky enough to be in an area where you’ve met Leslie, you’ll know how much I’m going to embarrass you now Leslie we’ve had lovely feedback from schools who work with you. And like I said before, we have many Leslie’s. No matter where you are in the country, you know, you get in contact with a curriculum advisor and they can show you the different mixed-age planning models and single-aged. So you could even have one that if you have cohorts that have single-age children and mixed age, you can create a curriculum that’s going to work for that kind of set up, can’t you?

Lesley: Put it this way, Caroline I haven’t yet come across one that I haven’t been able to resolve in some way or other.

Caroline: Wow.

Lesley: Some take longer, longer than others to organise, but yet we can create absolutely bespoke models for schools.

Caroline: Fantastic. And in the end, it is the schools that make it a success, isn’t it? In the hard work of these wonderful teachers and senior leaders across the country?

Lesley: Yeah, and can I interrupt there, Caroline, and say that part of the information that we have got as curriculum advisors for Cornerstones comes from our experience of the schools that we work with. You know, we have that fantastic opportunity to go and visit so many schools and see what they are doing. There’s fantastic practice out there. So we are in a very privileged position that we’ve seen lots of schools working in lots of different ways, and that all adds to the ideas that we’ve got and how we can help other schools.

Caroline: Well, thank you for sharing all your expertise with us here today on the podcast. And if you are a cornerstone is using school or you’re on curriculum Maestro, you can have a look at those curriculum models. It might be a time when you want to refresh your curriculum or take a different approach. Then do have a look on Maestro because there’s lots of ideas there. The main thing is to remember that it’s got to be right for your school. So we’re here to help with that. So thank you very much, Lesley, for joining me.

Lesley: It’s been my pleasure, Caroline.

Caroline: No problem. And hopefully, speak to you again sometime on a future episode. Maybe if I can twist your arm to join me again.

Lesley: I’m sure you could.

Caroline: Okay, Lovely. Thanks again. And thanks to you listener, for tuning in today for the Curriculum podcast. Until next time, it’s goodbye from us here.