Active discussions

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

Original poster

Class sizes at top London independent schools

42 replies

jeanne16 · 16/03/2016 14:04

Anyone know what these really are? I have heard rumours of class sizes of 28 in the lower years at LEH. Is that true? If so, that is very close to state school class sizes.

OP posts:
SAHDthatsall · 16/03/2016 16:45

Indeed. And wtf has a comprehensive which supposedly has 20-25 in the classes got to to with the OP's question?

My point about the travellers was that they are often the disruptive ones in such comprehensives - and primaries in my experience. That's all. But the point was lost in translation as using the common word I used to describe travellers was objected to. 😀

trollopolis · 16/03/2016 16:37

WTF have travellers got to do with a thread about London independent secondary school class sizes?

I mean, I know children from any and every background crop up in all sorts of schools, but they must make up a minute proportion of the pupils of secondary independents and hardly formative of the class size decisions.

SAHDthatsall · 16/03/2016 16:34

Ok apologies for using a commonly used word which is used to refer to gypsies which minifingerz declared she would report. Oh well.

LaurieFairyCake · 16/03/2016 16:30

There are more than 20 in every class in the independant prep school I work in. But there are at least 1 or 2 TA's per class.

That's 3 staff for approx 25 kids - it makes such a huge difference. One small group (not the same kids) are constantly being taken out for extra supervision. The teacher sets the work and then the class is just divided into a moveable group of 3.

bigTillyMint · 16/03/2016 16:19

I think my DS is at the same school minifingers!

SAHD WTAF?

Marmitelover55 · 16/03/2016 16:00

I thought the longer holidays were justified by the typically longer school day?

meditrina · 16/03/2016 15:56

That pick their own term length, to fit with what they want to get done (both academic and co-curricular). I don't think I've ever come across a school that's felt the need to justify it.

Original poster
jeanne16 · 16/03/2016 15:53

I also thought the justification for longer holidays in independent schools was because of the smaller class sizes. Do how is this justified?

OP posts:
SAHDthatsall · 16/03/2016 15:17

They were certainly the disruptive lot in our primary school

SAHDthatsall · 16/03/2016 15:15

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

minifingerz · 16/03/2016 15:09

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

SAHDthatsall · 16/03/2016 15:05

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

minifingerz · 16/03/2016 14:49

My son is at a large London comprehensive where class sizes are almost all between 20 - 25....

Original poster
jeanne16 · 16/03/2016 14:47

Still makes a huge difference to the teachers workload. Marking 28 books takes a lot more effort than 16.

OP posts:
AnotherNewt · 16/03/2016 14:41

Around 25 is pretty common

SAHDthatsall · 16/03/2016 14:40

I wouldn't get to fussed about class sizes which are less than 30. I think more than that and I would start to be concerned. I think DS class is 25/26.

Thing is with a state school you are likely to have a much wider range of ability and attitude making the class size more relevant.

If you take LEH for example then there will be little difference in ability across the class and unlikely to be disruptive people. So in theory you could have a larger class size in that case!

Itsneverlate · 16/03/2016 14:39

My daughter class in LEH is 27