Over the past few months the City of Edinburgh Council have been reviewing the composite class procedure via a short life working group with Head Teacher and Parent representation along with central staff.
This review included online consultation with pupils, parents/carers, school staff and other education staff, in January 2020. There were 3378 responses to the survey in January (parental responses – 3149). The outcome of this consultation is that City of Edinburgh Council have updated and combined the class organisation documents into one document (previously separate team teacher and composite class procedures). The outcome of the consultation has been used to inform the new document.
The new document will be used for planning classes for August 2020 and will be reviewed in two years time.
The main changes/outcomes are:
- Staff and parents still wanted a city wide procedure in place
- The procedure will no longer use different criteria for selecting children into composite classes compared to any other class
- The procedure gives more flexibility to Head Teachers to consider a range of criteria as opposed to having a main criterion of age which must be adhered to.
- It brings our practice more in line with those used by our neighbouring LAs
We hope that you will find this new procedure and guidance helpful and that it will support HTs when planning classes.
Currie Primary School 