Research School Network: What needs to be different – and what doesn’t? Lessons from mixed-age teaching How can one teacher teach Reception, Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3 at the same time?

“How can one teacher possibly teach Reception, Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3 at the same time?”

It is a fair question – and one we have heard more than once.

As a small primary school, mixed age teaching isn’t new to us. However, moving to a structure with Reception to Year 3 in one class and Years 4 to 6 in another made us look again, very carefully, at what effective mixed age teaching actually requires.

Initially, it is easy to look at the number of year groups and see the problems: different curriculum objectives, different starting points and very different levels of prior knowledge. The temptation is therefore to start planning several different lessons within one classroom. However, the more we worked through our curriculum, the more we realised we were asking ourselves the wrong question.

Finding the common ground.

Mixed age teaching does not mean that every child completes the same task. Equally, it shouldn’t mean that a teacher spends their lesson moving between three or four completely separate mini lessons. Instead, we have spent considerable time looking for where learning can be meaningfully aligned.

Mathematics is a good example. If pupils across Years 1, 2 and 3 are developing their understanding of place value, there is often a mathematical idea that can be explored together. We might begin with a shared representation and common mathematical vocabulary before expectations begin to separate. One pupil might be representing a two digit number using manipulatives. Another might be explaining the value of each digit in a three digit number. Another may be asked to reason about what happens when a digit changes position or solve a problem where the representation is less obvious.

The mathematics hasn’t been artificially simplified to create one lesson. Instead, we have identified the common conceptual thread and then considered what success looks like for different pupils.

This has also changed the conversations we have when planning. Rather than beginning with ​“What are Year 1 doing? What are Year 2 doing? What are Year 3 doing?”, we are more likely to begin with: What is the mathematical concept? What prior knowledge does each group bring to it? Where can the explanation be shared? Where do we need to diverge?

Models meet reality.

There are still things we are working out; I would love to say we have found the perfect model for mixed age teaching. We haven’t. There are still things that make us stop and think.

Retrieval is more complicated when pupils have experienced different curriculum sequences. The EEF (2021) highlights a key consideration when implementing retrieval approaches should be how to determine optimal task difficulty. A shared activity can sometimes appear beautifully efficient but not actually provide enough challenge for everyone. 

There are moments when trying too hard to keep pupils together can become just as problematic as separating them unnecessarily. Additionally, sometimes something looks great on paper and simply doesn’t work as well once there are actual children sitting in front of you. There is always a constant tension between ambition and workload. If our solution to mixed age teaching requires teachers to plan four separate lessons every evening, it isn’t really a solution.

Therefore, we keep returning to the same questions:

These questions don’t always produce a tidy answer, but they usually produce a better conversation. Perhaps this isn’t really about mixed-age teaching, the more we have explored this, the more I have wondered whether the lessons we are learning are actually specific to mixed age classrooms at all. Even in a single age Year 4 classroom, there aren’t 30 identical Year 4 learners sitting in front of the teacher. There are pupils with different starting points, different levels of prior knowledge, different experiences, different misconceptions and different barriers to learning. A mixed age classroom simply makes that impossible to ignore. As the EEF Guide to Inclusive Teaching states ​‘inclusive teaching is about helping every child to participate and succeed in school.’

For us, the answer hasn’t been to create more and more different pieces of learning. It has been to become increasingly precise about what needs to be different and also what doesn’t. 

And perhaps that is a useful question for any classroom.

Cronin, S. (2019) To mix or not to mix? A critical review of literature on mixed-age groups in primary schools.

Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) (2021) Cognitive science approaches in the classroom: A review of the evidence. London: Education Endowment Foundation. Available at: EEF – Cognitive Science Approaches in the Classroom

Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) (2025) Guide to inclusive teaching. London: Education Endowment Foundation. Available at: EEF – Guide to Inclusive Teaching

National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) (2025) Falling pupil numbers in primary schools: A summary for school leaders. Slough: NFER. Available at: NFER – Falling pupil numbers in primary schools