State school 6th forms oversubscribed

Actually at my daughter's school you could very well have had 20 in an A level Theatre studies class (they didn't offer A level music, only Btec) but only 5 in a chemistry class.

And my son had very large music classes at college.

Of course this changes, because the work per student head increases. The admin staff have to process more work. The teachers have to do more marking. The school spends more money on many of its resources. It needs more classroom space, more chairs, more loo paper, more practical time, more teaching assistants, more time for pastoral matters, more supply teachers, more stationery (yes many schools do still provide this, and textbooks).

Your post seems to just assume you can increase teachers’ workload because they have “spare capacity” 😆 Ask a teacher - well, anyone really - do they want to do more work for the same pay? More marking, prep, etc. for the same timetabled lessons? And ask them if adding a bunch more kids per class will have no effect on the quality of their work? What answer do you expect to get? Do pupils and their parents favour schools who offer larger class sizes at A-level or smaller ones? Why? Are there lots of kids clamouring to be taught in A-level classes of 30? Why not?

@noblegiraffe you still haven’t said how many extra pupils per class you’d be happy to take in with no timetabling offset for marking time. Are you happy to mark five or ten more students’ work in the same time you already allocate for existing marking? Will adding more students to a class increase or decrease the quality of your teaching? Will you be giving each student the same amount of individual time? (A-level maths is hard, and many students struggle. Do they just get less time and attention each if there’s more in the class? Is that what you and they want?)

Would your colleagues in English, Psychology or Biology be keen to add more marking to their workload with no offset or extra staff?

Point - missed 🙄

Trying again. Nearly all the ones I see do because they are high flyers. But the size of the classes doesn’t change whether or not you mention them. 🤣 If applicant A’s school reference mentions it, but applicant B in the same class doesn’t, I still know how big the class is, no?

We see applications for all school types and the UCAS page contains the pupil numbers for years 12 and 13. We also have this data and average class sizes from UCAS/DfE. It is easy to work out what kinds of sizes each kind of school likely has for A-level cohorts. We know how schools work - many of us, like me, are trustees or governors, ex-teachers, or do a lot of in-school outreach and get to know different types of schools very well. You forget that as well as asking applicants for the numbers on their classes, we also have their websites and Osfted data with staffing numbers to look at — all public data!

A big sixth form college with 1500 in year 12 is going to have a different kind of number in A-level classes to a small school sixth form with 80 students per year. It isn’t rocket science to work out how many students are likely in an A-level class from the data we get even if we didn’t have the number. Are there going to be 30 music A-level students in a class? No. And many schools provide textbooks and have decent library and sports and catering resources, and don’t contract out everything.

Of course students moving back into state will affect sixth form provision in oversubscribed area of the country. Of course some schools are desperate for more “bums on seats”, but those ones are not likely to attract lots of ex-private school pupils. That doesn’t mean there will be no impact across the country more broadly.

It’s as if everyone in this thread loves substandard contracted-out education and is competing to say their school will just love to do more of it by cramming some more kids in to their A-level provision. Good for you! That doesn’t mean that a) that’s what will happen everywhere; or b) that that’s de facto good for the pupil, the education system or the taxpayer. I’d prefer schools were properly funded, not that a counterproductive VAT policy just shifts financial stress around the system overall.

It's not a no brainer to me. Although I wouldn't want my child to go to a school with poor results, I would prefer a school with good results and small classes than a very selective one with large classes.

Surely schools have a number of reasonably 'fixed' costs dependent on the general size of the school?

So admin staff, canteen running, cleaners, heating, lighting. They don't change whether there are 1200 in the school or 1300.

Thus if a school decides to take on extra 6th formers and makes A level classes go from 8 to 12 (or 10 to 15) it really doesn't cost them extra. They benefit from the funding that comes with the students.

It only becomes more expensive if the school decides it needs to employ a number of extra full time teachers to cope with the increase in 6th form numbers. And that only happens if the A level classes get to a size they need to split and there is no spare capacity within the teaching staff. Even then teachers often seem to work part time so it probably wouldn't need a new full time teacher.

I don’t understand this. The cleaners clean each classroom each morning - there won’t be any new classrooms to clean. Likewise the toilets, the same toilets will be cleaned regardless is 1 person uses them or a thousand (we have driers btw so no worries about paper towels). The lighting goes on at 7am and shuts off at 7pm - again regardless of how many people are in the building.

And yet the school couldn't possibly increase staffing in response to additional pupils because of all the library books that needed to be funded....

Also for UK students applying to American universities they publish specific guidance for UK based teachers about references having to include their ranking in the cohort. The reason they do that is because that is not standard practice for UK schools and universities.

I didn’t remotely say that 🙄

I'm impressed at a school that has separate toilets for 6th formers.

My school is desperate to get as many kids enrolled as possible. You would have it that each extra kid we enrol actually places an unbearable strain on the school infrastructure to the point where any extra funding that they bring will have to be spent on toilet roll, library books etc to the point where there is nothing left.

I did reply to you on this up thread!

@noblegiraffe I didn’t remotely say that - you need to read back through the thread and see what I and others have written. You don’t seem to be good at reading comprehension as you didn’t understand my point (to another poster) about how an increase in the overall teaching budget needs to be paid for by an overall increase in taxation, not the VAT policy.

I find it very hard to believe that you don’t understand basic school funding. What size are your A-level classes? Would you happily add many more students with no extra time for marking, preparation or practicals? Would your colleagues in English or Chemistry be equally happy to do this?

Let’s take chemistry - an easier example. Who funds the school labs, the lab techs, the costs of resources for the practicals? The equipment? Do the sixth formers buy the chemicals for their practical lessons? Nip down to the shop for a couple of extra Bunsen burners, a bit of manganese and a new fume cupboard when the lower school one breaks, do they?

An easier example than the canteen. Are sixth formers’ parents invoiced for the cost of the lighting in the sixth form common room and the hand towels in the sixth form toilets? Or the proportion of the school cleaners’ time devoted to cleaning the classrooms after the sixth formers have been in? Or the time the admin or pastoral staff spend sending emails to the sixth formers?

My husband is an ex teacher who used to write references and is now involved in interviews for university admission. Noble's posts appear to be much more accurate than yours (and have been consistently so over the last 10 years.)

@neverthelastone You seem to think you're very much more knowledgeable than everyone else on what schools do and don't provide for sixth formers, class sizes etc, and also university admissions process. Are you a teacher who writes references or a university admissions tutor who reads them, or even a parent of a sixth former?

I am in London and have looked quite wide for DC. Sixth forms are generally looking for children, not the other way round

🤣You don’t frequent the education boards do you. This, along with the rudeness to the extent of deletion makes me very sceptical that you are in the position you say you are.

A maths teacher knows who pays for textbooks, which you still haven't acknowledged.

I'm also not the only teacher who has said that they don't include individual class sizes in school references.

It's funny that you point out that sixth form funding per pupil is lower because of the facilities that already exist in the school because of the existence of the lower school, yet you also insist that no money will be left over to pay for additional teaching staff from a huge influx of pupils who will double class sizes (and you still haven't explained why this will happen), because of the extra facilities they will need, despite those facilities already existing. Do you think that no sixth form funding goes towards teaching staff?

@Comefromaway I’m very sceptical that a maths teacher has no idea how school budgets and funding work. Or that someone who writes school references has no idea what they usually contain, or what data is included on that page.

Someone writing references for maths A-level students in particular will know very well that for high flyers schools include details of how that student compares to others in their A-level cohort (for maths it’s especially useful to know whether a student is in the top two of an A-level cohort of 20 or a cohort of 60, for example).

A maths teacher will usually have a clue that his or her department budget is not just paying only for pure teaching costs.

It’s already there, so the per capita funding is decreased as it’s cross-subsidised by the 11-16 funding. 🙄 It doesn’t mean that sixth form funding pays for none of it. Do you really think that schools 16-19 funding just assumes that the 11-16 funding pays for all the buildings, upkeep, energy costs, admin and pastoral staffing for the sixth formers too?

This is just one example of how the per capita funding doesn’t just pay for teaching only. Substitute lighting, heating, sports pitches (do sixth formers not play in any sports teams or do any drama or clubs in your school? ) Anyone who works in a school knows quite well that the money that “extra bums on seats” bring isn’t just allocated to teaching. Do you think schools don’t have upkeep and general costs? A maths teacher ought to know this very well.

The per capita funding for students at FE colleges is much higher - c.£7k compared to c.£4.3k. Why do you think this is?

X posted!😂

If a sixth form is attached to a school it’s already there and not all FE colleges have canteens. My dc’s didn’t. And yes parents pay for everything from locker keys to books.

Also do you have to be so rude. Noble is a highly experienced and well respected maths teacher who has given advice to MNers over many years.

I'm not actually asking you for help.

They are taught in those class sizes at my school.

I am glad of the “think of the teachers” though - makes a change from the usual posts!