24^th May 2024

Year 3 – New Classes for Year 4 in September 2024

Dear Parents and Carers,

At Whitehouse Community Primary School, we are committed to ensuring an effective learning environment for all children.

The balance of children’s characteristics and needs in each class across a year group can have a profound impact on the progress and wellbeing of each child.

As you know, our school often has changes to enrolment as some children leave and new children arrive.  When new children arrive, we place them in classes where spaces are available. Sometimes this can mean classes become quite unbalanced in terms of gender, educational needs, language needs, personal needs, social needs, maturity and friendships.

Therefore, occasionally, our strategy is to change the classes across a cohort.  This year, we have taken to decision to change the classes as your child moves from year 3 into year 4. 

The benefits of this include:

• Ensuring that classes remain balanced in terms of gender, educational needs, language needs, personal needs, social needs, maturity and friendships.
• Creating opportunities for children to learn and play with a wide variety of peers.
• Enabling children to develop relationships with a wider group of friends.
• Enabling children to develop their collaborative skills for learning.
• Enabling children to develop their social interaction.

The arrangements for class mixing are based on the professional judgements of teaching staff with support from the Senior Leadership Team, who are all dedicated to making the best combinations possible. When creating new classes, we will carefully consider the following:

• The wellbeing of children in terms of their existing friendship groups when we create new classes. 
• The best interests of the classes and the cohort as a whole.
• The balance of educational, social and personal needs within each class.

We have a well-structured transition process and have planned opportunities for the children to work with their new classes and teachers before the summer holidays. Class teachers have explained this to the children today so that they understand what will happen.   

If you have any questions, thoughts or concerns regarding how the classes changing may work for your child, you are more than welcome to raise them with the Phase leader, Mrs Gooch, or your child’s class teacher because they will play a key role in helping us to achieve the best changes possible.

Thank you for your continued support.

Anna Siddall

Co-Headteacher