Secondary School Dilemma

I always tend to think its best (for my DC) to start them at the largest school. Then if they needed to move school for whatever reason, they'd be moving somewhere smaller. This is just my gut feeling though.

OP With our elder DS we moved from state primary to independent and he was a bright enough boy but was quiet and didnt stand out enough to get attention and accolades in a large class nor was he doing badly so he didnt get attention at that end either!

This made us look for an independent school with smaller class sizes where he wouldnt get lost. We did that. It worked really well he rocketed academically and loves school. He can get into all the interesting things eg school productions, trips which he may miss out on due to too many numbers in a larger school. From a social point of view all the teachers know the kids, the kids mix across years and so it is a very friendly place to be.

There are downsides as are mentioned above - if you like team sports you are limited to a few pupils and unlikely to have AB and C teams of a great standard. When teachers are off ( for whatever reason) they just about cover normal teaching but extra curricular falls by the wayside as there are not enough people to cover for it. As he gets older and begins to work out who he is, there are less around him who are likely to be just like him whereas I think in a larger school there are more fish in the pond.

With DS2 we are looking at a larger school. He has no problem standing out in a crowd and has a competitive nature which will not be served by a smaller school.

All in all, it depends on what is going to make the best of your child.

I teach in a small secondary school ( around 200 pupils) and there are many advantages. Our school plays lots of fixtures against other schools and all our pupils get to play in a team. The other schools may have more pupils to choose from, but if your DC is not one of the best, they will find they don't make the teams. The same can be said for concerts, plays etc.

As for someone in this thread saying 15 is too small for a class, I can only assume you are not a teacher. Ofsted states that for a lesson to be rated good, the teacher must get round to all pupils in one lesson. Try doing that in a 1 hour lesson with 30 pupils. With a 10 minute starter, 10 minute plenary and 10 minute lesson, that amounts to 1 minute per pupil. Then we have to mark all their books. 5 minutes marking each book per week means 2.5 hours spent each week for a class of 30. With 6 classes, that means 15 hours of marking. Of course, small classes are better!

Also don't assume you will have any clue where the best teachers are working. NQTs are hired by the top private schools as well as by the toughest state schools.

My dd is in a small private girls school which caters for children from nursery to year 11. She had the choice of going to a very selective larger private school or stay at the one she is already at. Did was offered a substantial scholarship to the larger school and a much smaller scholarship for yr 7 in her current school. She chose to stay at her existing school. Tbh whilst I put no pressure on her I was delighted she decided to stay where she is. The reason is simple while the larger school has excellent results they have a reputation for telling pupils to leave if they have too much time off sick and in one case that I know of they put so much pressure on a child in year 7 to improve her grades (she was getting around 70% in tests which isn't that bad) she left after the first year. DD is a very quirky child and has no problems with people accepting her for who she is unlike at the state school she started in. As always on threads like this I always say choose the school which you believe is the best for you and your child and you will probably be fine

DD is in a state school with 80 in her year group. I'd say it is definitely right at the bottom end of what I'd consider 'big enough'.

She's mainly in classes of around 18 - it's complicated by the fact that it's a dual language school, with just one form of pupils working in Welsh medium that functions as a de facto top set (not that they'd be fiddling their WM results by pushing out lower achievers, oh no ). She actually prefers those lessons like English or French where she's in a slightly bigger group, I think because there's more 'bouncing off' of ideas.

This thread is so interesting. I am having a total wobble as we get the email tomorrow. Top of the list is a superselective, however the alternative is a huge comp or very small private school. I can't believe that he will do better in a year group of 20 odd than in the top set of the comp. This thread is giving me the courage of my convictions.

And I think 15's too small for a class as well!

I think it is a good number. I looked at Manchester Grammar school which is an excellent school and their form sizes are only 12 even though they have around 200 pupils in each year group. I think as long as there are plenty of opportunities to take sports lessons and clubs etc with larger number of pupils then 15 is a good number for academic lesson teaching.

Schools can definitely be too small. 175 pupils is way too small for a school to cater to the academic.

OP: Good to hear that both have A*-A above 50%. If you also have subject-specific breakdown and several kids get A stars in each subject, then this gives some confidence regarding the teaching.

I think the quality of the teaching is the most important thing (even more so than class sizes) at secondary, and my underlying concern re the smaller of the two schools is whether they have the critical mass to attract and retain (including paying well) highly qualified, enthusiastic, inspiring, brilliant teachers in each of the subjects, in full time positions, without making a loss. The 4-form school might have that more easily than the 2-form one. (I would also look at fees and financials in this context)

"I'm not sure a judgement purely on the basis of the number of pupils is entirely fair"

I was only focussing on size because you were!

And when I visited the school which came close to closure there were 4 in the a level maths set, surely too few to have positive exchange of ideas and I'd hate to be the one who didn't quite grasp it while the rest did.

But there is a difference in teaching and learning for 15 in a set in a selective school and 15 mixed ability in a non selective environment.

Another thing to look at is availability of subjects at GCSE - what range of say MFL and DT options do they have? You won't know yet what your DC will most want to do, but avoiding a very limited range is probably worth it.

BTW, I'd consider the schools you are considering 'small' and 'very small'

And I think 15's too small for a class as well!

"My elder DD (now at uni) attended the local state school and had a horrid time - in oversubscribed class of 32 for some subjects and she barely scraped half her GCSEs. So that has left me somewhat biased towards small schools."

That sounds like either a bad school or a bad fit rather than a size related issue.

35 in a year group is really, really too small.

175 pupils is smaller than a bog standard 1 form entry primary and may impact on the availability of clubs, team games and choir/orchestra etc.
My school was around 300 pupils and many of the 'opportunities' that they boasted about in the prospectus simply didn't exist in reality because they couldn't scrape the necessary numbers together.
It was an academically selective school with excellent results but every year girls would have the rug pulled out from under them and told that they wouldn't be sitting GCSE that they had been studying for. If you weren't going to get A*-B then you didn't sit the exam (unless it was maths or English).
Small schools can also be tricky if you are introverted or in any way quirky or 'odd'. I found it hugely claustrophobic but my sister who is more socially conventional than I am had a fab time at an even smaller school.

You really need to supplement (and better still, replace) the metrics used to assess the academic performance of the two schools with the statistics on A star and As! Also look at Bs and Cs separately, if you wish. Try the Telegraph online (for A+) or the school websites.

When you focus on %A-C, you imply that what really matters to you is that few people get Ds or worse. At good independents this number will be miniscule and therefore near meaningless. (Eg try 99.9 vs 100 A-C - you really have no idea which school is achieving better overall results, only that Ds are very rare)

Of course if the schools are non-selective and you want to compare them to your best available state alternative, %A-C is worth a look.

You should also treat igcses and gcses the same.

If a school is (very) selective, its results should be better - and this will sometimes make it difficult to compare schools, and might need to be factored into your assessment.

Agree with theead consensus that these schools are worryingly small. 6th form?

School local to us with less than 200 pupils nearly went under last year. Even 400 is not large by secondary standards. If it is coed you are talking about a very small pool from which to select sports teams etc so if your dc is that way inclined they may not get competitive matches and coaching ,good music opportunities et al. Agree about potential difficulties with staff turnover and maintaining facilities.

175 sounds very low for a secondary school.