I would like to ask for an advise on the following matter. My daughter is now in the 2nd year of the kindergarten and will go to the school next year. The school, to which she will be assigned, started experimenting with the mixed-age education and will fully switch to this system from the next academic year. There will be mixed classes for the grades 1/2/3 and 4/5/6.
Now I am trying to collect more information about mixed-age education. The idea seems interesting to me but I would like to make sure that it will not influence the quality of education and will not decrease my daughter's chances to enter Gymnasium. I know some parents who are very sceptical about this system.
I would like to ask your opinion on the subject. Is there someone on the forum whose children attend or attended such classes? Was this experience positive or negative? Would you let your children learn in this school or try to avoid it by all means?
Current "mass" education (based on age) is purely a carryover from the industrial revolution - you lumped everyone of the same age together as they should be at the same level having received the same amount of education up to a point. It didn't take in to account differing abilities or leanings.
I suspect I'd have benefitted from a non-age based education - pushing me in my weaker subjects by having to be taught with younger people - and then being challenged in my stronger subjects.
My eldest (just started college) went through 6 years of primary school in shared classes (2 years together) and seemed to come out at the end, educated to the applicable level. She was top stream in secondary school and, now similarly for college (this could also be down to inheriting her father's genes, though, and not just standard of education ).
However the 2 different years were sometimes segregated, within the same classroom, for certain subjects.
My youngest is currently in the 3rd class and following the same model - one year with the older class and the following year with the younger one.
In her situation, there are not enough children of the same age (7/8) to warrant the logistics of a classroom and teacher.
It's a different school, than the one my elder daughter attended, so we'll have to see how it is in 3 years time.
It does seem to be fairly normal, in my experience, that a teacher and classroom are shared by two years, although, for a good percentage of the time, the classes are learning separately, in parallel.
For primary school, with a relatively narrow curriculum, it doesn't seem to have an adverse effect.
People who do well in life learn how to adapt better than others. They also dont dwell overly on issues that cannot be avoided or changed. Bear in mind too that the swiss can be skeptical about a great many things. Perhaps whingers may be a better word?
In a few years what system will the school adopt? If it was me I would be thinking about how to deal with a new system etc rather than thinking about which school is best. Within reason of course. A wealthy family will not move to kleinhunigen basel because the school may be better suited to their child. They rather stay put, allow their kid to make friends and deal with it. It's character building too.
Learn to adapt and teaching kids the same is the key.
My small primary school (in the UK) had two classes - 4-7 and 7-11.
The younger ones were pushed hard and learned quickly, the older ones learned patience, supporting others and more depth to subjects. It worked pretty well.
Not sure how well it fits with the Swiss system though - I like the approach where they start fairly gently but then ramp up the work to be pretty tough later; seems to fit better with growing up and maturing than kids of all ages doing the same hours etc.
Personally I think mixed-age classrooms are the best but having said that (speaking from the parent side and the teaching side as I have experience in both), like any classroom, they are only as good as the teacher teaching in them.
Quite interesting insight, never thought about this. To build on this, in the kindergarten where our two boys are the groups were mixed and this seemed to have quite a positive effect on the older ones (be a bit more cognizant of younger kids and making sure they protect them) and on the younger ones (by trying to play and mimic the older ones they seem to catch-up and learn faster). Now the older one is in pre-school and the group is the newcomers (freshmen ) and the seniors. This seems to beneficial to both groups as well.
I think if your child starts with this style of learning it can be a very positive (not to mention practical) approach.
It did not work for our son but he was put in a school at age 10 (with fledgling German) that had mixed classes, 19 children across Yrs 1-6. The school authority seemed surprised...
I used to teach mixed age classes (5 - 7 years old in the mainstream; 5 - 16 in specialist language classes (no, that isn't a typo!!)) and found that they were great for children for several reasons:
children at the upper and lower end of the ability scales don't have to feel like they're "one of a kind", as they can just fall in with the other children - older or younger - who are at their level. Younger children are motivated to be like their more mature classmates - they learn work habits and behavioural norms quicker by example than listening to the teacher banging on about them all the time. Older children develop social skills like tolerance, patience, helpfulness and so on. These are not to be sniffed at, whether your child is headed for gymi or not! It can be nice for siblings to share a class - probably less important in your case, but in the language class I mentioned above it was a real comfort for children who were emotionally vulnerable. There are disadvantages to mixed-age classes, of course, especially if the age range is wide: a fight between two eight year olds is a much easier problem to solve than a fight between an eight year old and an eleven year old, for example, but these incidents are rare and overall I always found mixed-age groups to work very well indeed.
If you have any more questions, please fire away. I'll do anything to avoid the pile of marking in the corner...
From my experience (or rather that of my son) it was a complete clusterfüçk.
One that 2 years later we are still recovering from.
I can imagine that if done well great. But in this instance it was not and the school spent 2 years dicking around with mine and the rest of the children's future.
Numerous parent evenings, including at one point calling in the Kantonal education director, and complaints from all the parents made little difference.
Eventually we pulled all our children out. (We were not the only ones to do so.)
Maybe it was the specific situation in the specific school, but it sure has clouded my opinion of the much vaunted Swiss education system.
Sorry DB, but to give the other side: Older disruptive children muck up the class dynamic Younger children learn (very) bad habits from the older children Teacher spends all the time trying to control the class and none of it teaching Children fail to "learn" how to learn - potentially "scaring" them for life in terms of reaching their full potential
Technically with the Swiss approach to the acceptance of repeating years, there is little age-restriction on classes. For example my son's current class (at the new school) has several children that are older than him, some up to 2 years as they were young for a year and repeated, so that they have the same maturity as the rest of the current class.
So you could argue that the Swiss already have flexibility on this side.
This is how it has happened in my oldest son's class. At least one parent has already pulled their son out and sent him to a private school.
My son is the youngest in his class and some of the boys are almost two years older and tower over him in height and bulk.
Bullying - both physical and verbal is rife.
I don't believe lessons are disrupted in his case - that usually is down to the teacher and she's good in that respect but the missed age aspect (due to repeat years) appears to have no benefits for those who don't need it.
And to answer one of DBs points - I do not want my child to have any of the attributes of the older children in his class - and certainly not before his time.
I also don't see how any of these problems are exclusive to mixed age classes, they can happen (and do) in any class configuration..
Our daughter just started in a mixed class 1-3, and we're very open to the idea and so far it seems great. She loves it, has an older girl from 3 Klasse that's her mentor, so to speak. Our daughter is likely the smallest and youngest and she seems to be getting on just fine with the bigger kids too.
I went to Montessori for a good chunk of my childhood myself, which had mixed age classes, and I thought it was great.
Whether mixed age classes works well or not depends on the cohort, school, curriculum and teacher. It also depends on what differentiation "looks like" in the classroom.
exactly! unfortunately, if you introduce something new, every crap teacher will blame it in the new thing/method etc. and not try and improve their skills instead. if the teachers are good, this is a great way of learning (and teaching) and very good for the kids' life skills (social, emotional, etc.). Their academic skills can only benefit as by helping others they improve their own skills as well.
Guys, it is as easy to say "it is the crap teachers fault" as "it is the system's fault". Can you not see the irony?
For the record, in 2 years & 1 term, our son's class went through 2 "main teachers" and 4 supply teachers. Were they all shit? Some weren't, but that doesn't (didn't) help my son's class.
I'll repeat, just as in all walks of life, some teachers are better that others. Some classes have a better temprament (for want of a better word) than others. What I am saying is that life isn't all sweet as roses and this system doesn't always work.
Totallay agree with the points made by DB above. I'd add that class size would also make a big difference- here in my part of Switzerland, class size is 15 to 17 max- so the teacher has much more time for individuals too (I taught classes of 33 in the UK).