As one who can (immodestly!) claim to have coined the way we describe school year groups, I have been pondering the strange case of Reception (YR). Many children now enter the Foundation Stage before Reception and therefore are being “received” earlier. A small number never get “received” at all.

We also have no shorthand way of distinguishing between year groups in nursery education (itself an out-moded term with the introduction of the Foundation Stage). Should we reconsider the way we describe year groups?

There are two alternatives: renaming Nursery and Reception as F1-F3 and the remaining year groups as Y1-13, or renaming the first year of nursery as Y1 and the remainder as Y2-16. Or am I being pedantic?

Professor Colin Richards
Spark Bridge, Cumbria