Reprinted with permission Child Care Information Exchange

PO Box 3249, Redmond, WA 98073 (800) 221-2864 www.ChildCareExchange.com

Multi-age grouping can and does work

Quality Care
Through Multi-Age
Grouping
of Children

M
by Leo Prendergast

Multi-age grouping (MAG) of young children in early childhood

services can and does provide a rich and exciting learning environment and it can be made to work for children, parents, and staff
with the right kind of approach and attitude. If I had a dollar for all
the times people have said to me, We tried mixed age grouping, and
it did not work, I would be a much richer bloke today.
Well, at UTS Child Care MAG does
work and has been doing so for some
time. In our programs multi-ages
include children from birth to ten year
olds, and they mix in almost every
conceivable combination. The children
love it, new children settle well to the
group, and challenging behaviours are
minimised. Parents are happy with the
service and after a time become great
proponents of mixed age grouping.
Staff are happy with the challenge of
the workplace and the positive environment they work in. The positive
feedback we get when our five year
olds go off to school suggests the
approach delivers a quality educational program and effectively helps
children make the transition to school.

As our programs are located on campus,

our families have particular needs which
may fall outside the mainstream early
childhood program. Parents have very different patterns of child care need to match
their personal course requirements. Those
requirements change during the year from
week to week and semester to semester.
All this leads to very mixed child enrolment patterns. Other than the 20% of children who attend five days a week, almost
no two children attend for the same pattern. During school vacations, and in the
late afternoons the birth to five-year-old
children can also be joined by some five to
12-year-old school-aged children.
In this environment many of the norms of
other early childhood programs, which

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have the same group together on regular

days each week and with very predictable
attendance patterns, simply do not apply.
As a result, we needed to group children
and organize our programs to ensure the
consistency that young children need in
an early childhood program. Our
response has evolved over time, but the
one constant from early on has been the
need for all children to relate to more than
one or two staff members; and the importance of allowing children to choose the
adult and/or peers with whom they feel
comfortable. By allowing children to
decide who they will interact with and
relate to each day, we have provided a
sense of child-generated stability. All of
this may sound quite reasonable, but I
hear a chorus of voices saying there are
just too many hurdles to run a mixed age
group setting. For me those hurdles
include four main concerns:

Laws and regulations

dont let us do it!
Laws and regulations, drawn up by well
meaning people nonetheless, consistently
set up barriers to MAG. We have to live
within those laws and find ways to marry
a MAG approach to the constraints of the
regulations.
Leo Prendergast is a disenchanted engineer who went back to university in his
late twenties to study early childhood
education and has never looked back.
He has been a teacher, centre director,
consultant, and lecturer and currently
coordinates early childhood services at
the University of Technology Sydney
which operates long day care, evening
care, occasional care, after school care,
and vacation care on campus for staff
and students of the university. He is a
passionate advocate
of the value of high
quality childrens
services in helping
to shape a pluralistic
and healthy world
community.

Firstly, what we think the regulations

say and what they actually state may
well be different. Regulations in my state
say that a certain number of staff with
particular qualifications must be in
attendance at the premises when
particular numbers of children are being
provided with a child care service. The
regulation does not say which staff have
to be with which children or which
number of children at any point of time
during the day. Yet so often I have heard
from other teachers and directors that
teachers have to work with over three
year olds; or nurses have to work with
the babies; or babies cant be in that
group. The regulations dont include any
of those things, yet somehow so many of
us have come to believe they do.
Regulations in the neighbouring state of
Victoria include advice that it is important to consider how children are
grouped, and I certainly agree with that.
But they go on to make a claim that,
Same age groupings allow staff to plan
experiences specific to the childrens
stage of development, while still catering for developmental differences within
the age group. In a quality MAG setting, planned and spontaneous small
groupings will happen all the time
and they can be same age, mixed age, or
a mix of two disparate ages all catering for the developmental and interest
differences within the group. Often the
ebb and flow of a day creates natural
periods when one age group will be
absent, i.e. mid morning when the
babies are having a sleep. We can learn
to use those times to provide the age
appropriate experiences, like forming
small groups to provide the school
readiness we want to encourage or
responding to the shared interest of
some children. So we can easily retain
MAG while still complying with the
intention and wording of that regulation.
Those regulations go on to state, Same
age groupings ensure that they are pro-

tected from the active, vigorous play of

older children. In my experience,
young children are in far greater danger
from other young children, babies, and
toddlers in a same age group. Often
they dont yet have the conflict resolution and language skills and hence can
bite, pinch, and push another child out
of the way, just as they would push an
offending cushion or ball that was in
their way. In contrast, older children can
and do learn to look after younger children.

and then try to mix the ages together for

a specific period for experiences and
activities. Now that often does not work
well. But try going the other way. The
home room is the place for mixed ages,
arrival, settling in, meals, sleeptime,
quiet times, etc.; and then specific experiences are designed for a child or group
of children in smaller groups. So dont
just assume what the regulations state;
become familiar. Often there are ways to
have MAG and still be in line with government rules.

One of my favourite times is after lunch

when most of the babies will be awake
having been asleep during the morning.
As well some fours and fives who no
longer need a sleep will be awake.
Those big tough five-year-old boys
become pussy cats as they protectively
nurture, play with, and generally fuss
about the babies. A bit of subtle staff
intervention can involve discussion and
learning as well as a boost to self confidence, caring and sharing competencies,
and the self awareness of both the
babies and the older children. A novel
experience for the many children now in
one or two child families, it is no more
than what was an everyday experience
for children in the larger families of two
or three generations ago or what is
still commonplace for children in many
cultures around the world. These children quickly learn not to allow vigorous
play to put babies in danger and are
better for that experience. At the same
time, when the babies are asleep earlier
in the day, the older ones have all the
time they need for that vigorous play.
Again, MAG can and does protect
babies as per the regulations, but not
necessarily by using the same strategy.

One of the ironies of all this is that early

childhood education theories are moving away from this strict developmental
approach. We talk about interest-based
learning and the image of the child. No
longer is development seen as the only
important criteria for programs. We
strive to focus on each child and determine that unique childs image. We
move away from childrens needs
towards an acknowledgement of each
child as an active learner and what they
bring to the learning experience. We
acknowledge the values of scaffolding
as an integral part of the learning
process. Yet somehow we still fixate on
childrens developmental level in determining grouping in early childhood programs. It is time for our every day
practices, and our government regulations, to catch up with our rhetoric
about our new understandings of the
childrens learning process.

So dont feel a MAG setting has to

always be one in, all in. There is a place
for small groups of same age peers to
undertake specially designed experiences. So many programs divide children into home rooms on an age basis

There are too many health reasons

why we should keep children of
different ages separated from
other age groups.
Some medical professionals advise that
we should not group children of different ages in early childhood settings and
especially not those in nappies with
older children. This approach is aimed
at minimising cross infection to improve
the health of the children. However, this
idea of isolating children and providing

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spotlessly clean hygienic environments

may not be in their best interests. We
now use many more disinfection
regimes both in the home and in centres
and wrap our young children in cotton
wool. Yet the outcome is, if anything,
higher rates of some diseases. In Australia authorities are concerned by high
levels of chest and bowel infection, skin
infections are prevalent, there are
increased allergic responses in children,
and we have increases in the number of
young children suffering from asthma.
This suggests that our current general
health approaches regarding young children and disease does not necessarily
lead to better outcomes.
In the past children grew up in larger
groups than todays typical family in
western countries with one or two children and one or two adults. Families
were bigger, with five or six children per
family just a couple of generations ago,
and children grew up closer to their
extended family and within groups in
the neighbourhood. Those groups
tended to be of mixed ages. How many
family gatherings have you ever been to
where only the under two year olds
could play together and the three and
four year olds could not mix with the
five and six year olds? It was, and is, all
in from babies to grandmas. I think the
jury is still out on whether the age segregation does improve health outcomes
for children.
But even assuming it is in the best
health interest of young children to be
cared for in strictly age segregated
groups, we are also making a judgment
that health outcomes outweigh important learning outcomes. We need to look
at what other aspects of child learning
might be enhanced by multi-age settings
that would balance against any adverse
health outcomes. All things being equal,
it might be better to have younger children cared for separately from older
ones on health grounds. But all things

are not equal and grouping of children

within a program can and does have
important benefits in a whole range of
ways that may outweigh those medical
concerns.
Of course, when such medical concerns
are cited within regulations to proscribe
mixed age settings, there is little you can
do. Again, read those regulations and
determine what is forbidden and what
is a recommendation. Within such recommendations, develop practices that
follow the letter and spirit of the law
and still fit comfortably in a MAG
setting.

Our families, with the

burning desire to give their children
the best possible start in life,
need to see the educational values
of their childs
early childhood program.
Regulations again include requirements
that we provide an educational program, that we meet the needs of each
child, and that we prepare children for
school. Some parents may be against
mixed age settings feeling that their
child might be educationally handicapped by that approach. We need to
reassure those parents and government
regulators that in stressing the uniqueness of each individual we need not be
driven by concepts of developmental
stages. We need to lead parents to a
greater awareness of what and how
young children learn.
Our problem remains that for so many
of the families using our centres, their
educational values of the age grouped
classroom, carrying the echoes of the
own school days, is obvious. They equate
the organisation of children into age
grades as inherent to education. We have
allowed that concept to filter down to
early childhood (0-5) education. The
typical preschool and child care centre

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will organize its children into age

groups with babies, toddlers, threes and
fours groups being the norm. We are
ever keen to be seen as educational and
throw off the baby-sitter tag and so, too
often, allow ourselves to make choices
based on the possibly false perceptions
of our families. In contrast, the educational values of an environment where
children are merely playing, or chatting
to each other, or to adults, is not
obvious.
We have to be much better advocates
for what we are teaching and what our
children are learning in early childhood
programs. When questioned by parents,
we should be able to tell them about our
whole child approach and about the
social, emotional, problem solving, language development, self esteem, caring
and sharing, and group skills that our
programs provide to children.
We keep the same grouping model as
the school sector, yet we know from so
many of our early learning theorists that
children are not learning organised sets
of information or specifically defined
skills in our services. Instead, they are
mostly learning how to learn, how to
exist in society, how to communicate
and be part of a group, and how to
understand group norms. They are
learning how to interact with others,
make friends, care for others, feel good
about themselves. Rather than learning
the exact skills of making certain letters
when writing or organising abstract
numbers in arithmetic, they are grasping concepts of what a number is and
how written text could convey meaning.
We also know that different children
learn these ideas and master these concepts at quite different times in their
development. We are all familiar with
the two year old with precocious language skills for a child of that age, yet
the same child is not as competent as
his peers in gross motor skills and can

be left out of play by those peers. We all

know the child whose intellectual and
problem solving is far ahead of her
cohort, yet whose emotional responses
are erratic and uncontrolled and so
makes no friends.
When modern larger schools were
developed, one of the principles on
which children were organised was that
children of the same age were grouped
together and taught the same things at
the same time. Assumptions were made
about chronological age equaling developmental age and children learning best
in a group where all members have
about the same knowledge and skill
levels. It may be that the convenience of
the teacher being able to present the
same material to all members of a group
may have taken precedence over what
was in the best educational interests of
all children. Even in multi-age settings
in schools, the criticism seems more
often that it is hard for the teacher, not
that it is not educationally rewarding
for children.
However, in early childhood programs
that emphasis is turned around, and it is
the journey of learning that is the essential thing. Vygotskys ideas about scaffolding suggest that real learning is
more than just the individual mastery of
one person in isolation. Our modern
image of the child is of a person who
comes to our service with his/her own
knowledge and understandings that
they can share with us. These understandings play an integral role in the
learning process for themselves and for
those around them.
In life we learn from parents, teachers,
mentors, grandparents, siblings, peers.
We learn by watching and by doing. We
learn by showing others what we know
and investigating what we dont know.
We learn by sometimes being a leader
and sometimes a follower. We learn by
being part of a group and reacting to

others within that group. Early childhood education seen in these terms
seems a natural match to MAG: scaffolding and peer support, mentoring
and role modeling occur so easily within
the mixed age setting. The opportunities
occur as a integral part of the organisation of the day.

Our staff doesnt understand MAG

and finds it too difficult to work in.
Quality assurance programs require us
to ensure a consistent environment for
children, to ensure children develop
secure attachments with a small number
of adults and to ensure that children,
especially young children, are cared for
by a carer who knows the child very
well. New staff find those aims hard to
achieve in a MAG setting. Give them a
chance, however, and we find most take
to MAG very quickly and become more
confident.

remarkable skills.
Children being brought up within a
mixture of ages has been the norm
historically and remains so within the
many cultures represented within a
modern community. That mixture
included grandparents, other extended
family, older siblings, and neighbours.
We have all heard, It takes a village to
raise a child. Since our children may
well spend long periods in child care,
we need to make that care more like the
vision of a village community.

An advantage for staff is that in working

with a wider age range, they tend not to
fixate on the typical development
related to a particular age group. In a
same age environment, the child who is
slower to develop mastery in one or two
areas of development can be seen as
delayed when often their development
is still well within what is considered
normal. In the mixed age setting those
comparisons are meaningless; staff are
more likely to be encouraged
to see each child as an individual.
If a three year old chooses one day to
spend time with a younger cohort, is it
something to be really concerned about?
Maybe that child is revisiting where
they have come from and reviewing
existing learning. He is taking the
chance to hang out with a younger
crowd for a while to rediscover self confidence. At the same time, the toddler in
a mixed age setting, immersed in the
language and problem solving of the
older children in the group, can show

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