Wondering if we did the right thing moving school

[londongirl1]

I helped out in my daughter's (yr 3) class today (it's a special project week) and I was amazed at what the teacher has to do ... there are no classroom assistants (it would seem) and she has 28 kids all of widely varying abilities. She's a good, very experienced teacher, and the behaviour in the class was very good, but she'd have to be superwoman to give all the kids the individual attention they need. And what concerned me most was that my daughter definitely wasn't trying her hardest - her writing looked sloppy (normally its very neat) she didn't put up her hand to answer any of the questions, and she looked distracted at times. We moved her from a private school to a state school last September and I'm seriously wondering if we did the right thing. This sounds dreadful - but there's also obviously a top table - and my daughter wasnt on it - up to now, I've always been told that she was an excellent learner and a 'strong average' kid - should I be worried? Any help or advice or experiences gratefully received.

[Crackle]

Worrying about schools is awful isn't it?

At my ds last school, some of the older kids (mixed year classes) sat with the younger kids. This was meant to be beneficial to the younger ones to have a more mature child to copy and beneficial to the older child as they got to be mentors.

In reality, my ds did a lot of listening to little ones doing their reading. Not optimal.

Looking back, all my classes as a kid were probably this big with one teacher and I learnt. How do other parents feel about the class? Why did you leave the private school system?

[fairyjay]

Your dd would have been aware of you being there, so probably wouldn't be her 'normal' self iykwim.

[londongirl1]

Hi Crackle - thanks for all your thoughts - the other parents seem to be happy with the class (their kids were all at the feeder infant school before); though I think I am probably over-critical having come from elsewhere. We moved to save the money - we could've scrimped and scraped to send her private but weren't sure if it was worth it. The issue is whether she needs individual attention to get the best out of her -she is rather a coaster I think if she's not challenged ... though you're so right about class sizes when we learned at school - as you say, we did ok ...