You will receive today your child’s end of year school report and your child’s new class teacher for next year, please see attachment below

There is also a attachment below explaining how you can access your child’s national test data on-line.

This year due to financial constraint placed on schools funding, as was the case last year, we are having to run some mixed age classes. As a result of this, the school has needed to make some redundancies in its teaching compliment.

I appreciate that some parents may find this a bit disconcerting, but can I assure all parents that your child will continue to make the progress they are capable of regardless of single or mixed aged classes.

We are running mixed age classes for a number of reasons. These being

1. Pupil numbers across the authority are dropping and we, like other schools have lower school starters than previous year. This year we have 64 pupils leaving in year 6 and 32 pupils coming into Nursery. This has led to a reduction in the number of teachers we are funded for.
2. Education funding is lower than it used to be. Whilst RCT have tried to provide schools with a reasonable budget, public finance constraints have impacted greatly on schools both in teaching and support provision and we at Pontyclun are no different.
3. Class sizes have needed to be balanced so each class is roughly the same size.

You will notice that 1 class is a year 2 and 3 mix. This is because with the new curriculum for Wales pupils in the primary sector fall into 3 phases or steps.

Provision step 1 is Nursery and Reception

Provision step 2 is Year 1- year 3

Provision step 3 is Year 4- Year 6.

Teachers will plan together across these steps ensuring the pupils are taught the appropriate skills in a progressive way. This has been our approach this year and we feel it has been very successful.

Class splits have been made based on age. Other ways we could split, might be ability or friendship groups. However, these approaches create far too many tangibles that we are unable to address.

Where classes have been historically split, a very small number of parents have queried the classes and requested changes. We are unable to set a precedent with this but we do say that if by October half term, once the class has settled in, there are serious concern, please do come and speak to us.

Thank you for your understanding and appreciation in this matter and please be aware, your child’s welfare and development is very important to us.