Thoughts on large (280) vs smaller (130) state secondaries?

Mine are at a big school. 330 a year. Common here. But their primary was huge so they know no different

Sounds like on paper they would both be fine. Have you visited them on open evenings, as maybe the way to go is where you and your DD get the best vibe from. Also ask them about what pastoral support they offer if you think you child may need it.

Failing that just go on whichever is the easiest journey to and from!

My child goes to a school with 250 in the year group - it is fine. As others have said, it isn't the whole year group mixing with each other and seeing lots of different children in each lesson. Instead, for the majority of lessons they are in their tutor group. In other subjects, there are sets, or groups for PE where they join with two other tutor groups, so they are in a group of 90 - not mixing with the whole year group. From my observations, this actually works well for friendships. It is like a smaller school within a bigger school (with all the advantages that bigger schools bring, as PPs have said).
100% I would go for the bigger school.
No sixth form is a negative as not being available for your child, but also, it will be a less academic school (no offence intended to anyone) and they will struggle to retain good teaching staff.

Yeap. My error. I went as advised to look for teachers numbers ( not found it) but found that it is less pupils by 1000. So mea culpa. Apologies ( blushing)

8 x 30 pupils makes 1200 pupils (plus sixth form) not 2250 anyway so 50 teachers might be right.

Agree 50 teachers for 2250 students is not workable. We had that sort of number in my old school of about 1,200 or fewer students.

Edit: I see the pp has corrected the figure!

If your child is shy their best chance of making good friends might be the clubs so I think you have to look at the whole picture of what is on offer at each school.
The larger school having a sixth form may attract some higher calibre teachers. They may also offer a greater range of subjects.
My shy dd started at prep school in a tiny class and then went to state schools. Interestingly she was happier in the bigger schools! In a bigger school there is more chance of finding like minded people.
The school leadership is another important thing to consider.

It is in top 100 UK schools when it comes to results at GCSE- so not really.

I made a mistake. I was looking for no of teachers which I have not found on gov. page but it is not 2250 but 1250 upps

Maybe then 50 teachers are involved in teaching y7 and that is what they meant? ( And of course they also are teaching in other year groups+ there are other teachers)

That's a worryingly tiny number @TheGoldenGate

Just looked up DC's school - London comprehensive.
2527 pupils
195 Full-time equivalent teachers.
220 staff overall.
Ratio of 12.9 pupils to FTE teacher which reflects reality. DC (Y11) is in class of 12 for quite a few subjects.

My son is in y7 and during parent's evening they told us that there is 50 teachers in the school.
If that's correct then they have a problem and must be using a lot of supply teachers or unqualified staff to cover classes. It would be arithmetically impossible otherwise.

If you go on the government website, its gives the official number of staff at the school (both actual and full time equivalent).

For our local school of 1000ish pupils, its 117 members of staff, with the equivalent of 69.6 full time teachers.

2250 divided by 50 is 45 pupils per teacher assuming they are all full time and all in the classroom all the time which seems massively unlikely.
I did miscount the teachers on DC's school staff list actually. 4 of the SLT also have teaching responsibilities and so are listed twice, once as SLT and once under their subject department. So there are 87 people on the teaching staff list. TAs are on the associate staff list along with people like the librarians,lab technicians and pastoral staff as well as the domestic staff, maintenance team etc. Total paid school staff of all types is 182.
It's a state comprehensive. The staff list is in the public domain and I have no reason to disbelief it. For comparison I had a look at the website of our next nearest secondary which is a bit bigger and they have about 225 people on their staff list in total so probably much the same ratio.

Maybe among older age groups there are less forms- I don't know. My son is in y7 and during parent's evening they told us that there is 50 teachers in the school. I can send you private message with the name of the school and you can call them and ask - easy to check. Just express the wish.
There is nothing dismissive in saying " and other staff members". Nothing- you are fishing the problem where it doesn't exist. They didn't tell us how many staff members have entire school and only no of teachers was mentioned.

2250 divided by 50 gives 45 pupils per teacher. Doesn't sound likely.
Love the dismissive plus a "few other staff members" comment.

It is 8 form. 30 pupils per class is not an unusual number here in London.
50 is the number of teachers and not TA or SEN and so on

91 teachers per 1200 sounds rather unbelievable in a state school as it means that there is 1 teacher per 13 pupils. Maybe overall 91 staff members including teachers or it is private

Surely that can't be right? That's a very high pupil:teacher ratio which would lead to absolutely massive class sizes. I've just had a look at the staff list on my DC's former school's website and there are 91 teachers and 95 other staff listed for a school of around 1200 pupils.

They don't even know all the teachers!"
@senua
That is greatly exaggerated. In our school there are 2250 kids and 50 teachers + few other staff members. Of course the headmaster knows them

Bigger every time (and that's a with a DC in a school with 450 in a year).

More resources, more teachers, more options, more friendship choices, more chance they have met a child like your DC before and more options for flexibility for sets, subject choices and extra curricular.

Also, PAN can change. When we moved here, when DD was in Yr5, PAN was 180. Her year PAN increased to 210. (Shes now in Yr9)
And its now increased again to 240. (Supposed to be one off current Yr7, but has been now announced as permanent).

But yes... unfortunately none of us have Crystal balls. You can ask how they help pupils struggling socially. But it does seem to be luck.

In a larger school, they’ll probably be taught in half or quarter year bands, so they won’t have the large numbers to deal with. If your child takes time to develop friendships, that scenario won’t be much different from the smaller school, but there will be the economies of scale that a larger establishment offers.

I agree that "large" and "small" are both very subjective and area dependent. My DC went to a secondary with 160 per year and that felt absolutely massive to us, but then they'd been at a primary school with less than 10 pupils in each year group and some of the other secondaries in the area are much smaller than theirs. In other areas a school with a PAN of 160 would be considered small.
I don't think that bigger or smaller schools are inherently better. Their are pros and cons either way but the way a school is run determines how good it is, far more than the number of pupils.
From the social perspective, whilst obviously there's more than twice as many kids to choose friends from in the bigger school I'd think it's unlikely that most people wouldn't be able to find at least a few others that they get along with out of a year group of 130, and I wonder if, in practical terms having 280 in the year materially increases that probability. In my experience, my children made friends with others in their form predominantly, plus a few who attended the same extracurricular activities. Later on, at GCSE and A level they met more different pupils as there was more mixing, but in the first few years most teaching was done in forms, and even in subjects that were setted it was pupils from the same half of the year. So out of the 160 pupils in their year group I would guess my DC only interacted with about 50 on a regular basis. If there had been twice as many forms I still think they would have spent most of their time with roughly the same number of children. My youngest made a new close friend in 6th form.They had both been there since year 7 but they'd never been in a class together before and had different hobbies so had never come across each other previously. They didn't even know each others names until 6th form. Big groups tend to break into smaller ones anyway so the amount of social contacts may not be that different in the bigger school. Choice of subjects in the exam years and range of extracurriculars may be more of an issue though so I would look carefully at that.

I think it's comforting to be able to see familiar faces, even if you are not particularly close to them.

I'd agree with those who say this depends so much on the peer group. My DS went to a large secondary school with 100 others from his primary school. He was put in a class (most lessons in same class) with a close friend. Close friend unexpectedly left at Christmas, and DS spent the rest of Year 7 trying to find other friends.

Whereas DD went to the same secondary school with no one she really liked in her class, made friends with 2 other girls on the first day and they stayed her friends all the way through school (they are now 18 and still close).

I went to a larger secondary, 250 intake per year. Dh went to the smaller secondary nearby which had around 90 per year. He loved his school, it felt like a family. I didn’t mind mine but only knew a few kids in my year, most teachers didn’t know me, although there were lots of clubs it was harder to get into the sports teams or a part in the school play because they had so many to choose from. DS is very quiet in school so we opted for the smaller school for him and he’s really thriving now. Most of his primary friends go there too which helped and he is so much more confident now. I think it depends on the child themselves and their personality and also where a lot of their friends are going.

@ParentOfOne I'm going against the tide here and saying we chose a small intake (smaller than your small option). School chosen specifically because she is shy/quiet and very well behaved so we didn't want her getting lost.
It has worked brilliantly. Made the transition from a rural village primary much easier and she has grown in confidence immeasurably. Nowhere for them to hide and all the teachers know the names of all the kids. She has been able to stand out rather than get lost in a crowd. It was definitely the right choice for her.