If you yourself went to a very small primary school...

[IaskBoringQuestions]

... can you tell me your views on going to one?
Are there any pros and cons you can list to having gone to a small school?

(Sorry for such a dull thread)

I ask because I went to a large city primary and so did my first child.

So now for my 3 year old I can apply for her September 2021 primary School place- tomorrow! -eeek.
And I am in the catchment now for a very small village school- they typically have 8-10 pupils per year group.

And while I know there are good points to a small school I worry that her chances of having good friends will be much lower.
In my year at school there were 60 kids my age. In my oldest child’s year there were 90 kids his age!!
And that was good because we each had loads of friends.
A big school meant loads of school trips and residentials. Lots of parties to go to etc.

A small school I assume means more attention and better chances to learn without distraction.

Any experiences or advice much appreciated, I will read every one.

I went to a small primary. I've never been good at fitting in, and in the primary I was bullied badly and didn't have a single friend. DS goes to a normal "class of 30 per year" primary and is happy.

Depends - if it’s for education definitely- if you are able to get DC to our if school activities to broaden their interactions it’s fine ie brownies/ cubs, dancing/football etc do they meet other kids and at high school will know more faces

There were only two other girls in my class. They were friends with each other. It was lonely.

@Ideasplease322 separate infant and junior schools, so no, more like 120 children in the whole school. That is a small village school for SE England - you don’t get schools with 3 children in a year group around here.

Most of the primary schools around here have 100-150 children in each year. Much bigger.

Mine was tiny ie 5 in my year and old fashioned too including learning country dancing and embroidery. I was far ahead academically from my peers and put in the juniors 2 years early which in hindsight wasn’t quite right. A supply teacher advised my mum I’d be much better off in a larger school and when we moved house the following year and joined a 2 form entry it proved right. There were so many more opportunities socially and academically- my teacher even wondered whether I’d been home schooled as I was clearly bright but very unstructured and I can see now socially a bit lacking. I’m sure there are schools that would be very different from my experience (which is v dated) but dropping into the thread as one perspective.

One thing that I noticed looking for schools last year is that a lot of the smaller schools near us didn’t offer wrap around care and seemed more set up for SAHMs. One of my friend’s children has started at a very small village school and the parents are expected to help out on a rota, her child won’t be there for a full day until November. I’d love a small class size but facilities and provision of wraparound became more important.

@IaskBoringQuestions

Thanks so much for your replies I’ve read every one of them with interest.

• and I still don’t know what to do

Lots of positives and negatives really.

It kind of boils down to do I chose better Chance of learning or better chance of friendships.
And I think both are very important.

OP you haven’t described your circumstances. I think that’s really important. Do you live in a village? Are you considering driving your child to a nearby town while all the rest of the village kids go to the village primary? Or are you totally rural between two villages and deciding which direction to drive? Your local brownies/cubs dance sport - are they gong to be filled with kids from one or the other school? It’s really hard being the odd kid who goes to a “different school” from the rest of the local kids.

On the academic side, the bigger primary is still a safer bet IMO. If they get a weak teacher/one they don't get on with the style of in a big school, they will only have them for one year. In my little primary each teacher was for 2-3 years

I went to a small primary (moved from a larger one in Y4) and I was really unhappy. Small friendship groups which had already formed, I didn’t fit in - and I subsequently really struggled with the transition to secondary as i went from a school of less than 90 pupils to one with 200 in just my year. Small schools are great if you fit the mould. If you don’t it’s a long time to be on the outside looking in.

I have to say I thrived academically at the bigger school. There was no gifted and talented provision at the smaller school and it felt like we all had to fit into whatever box made it more convenient for the teachers.

The worst thing was that my confidence had been so badly damaged by years of being bullied and the outsider at the small school that the low self esteem held me back in EVERY area of my life and although I was a straight A/A* student, I didn’t have the confidence to take up the university places I had (Oxbridge candidate, top London and other Russell Group universities). I was convinced I’d always be the outsider and not fit in. I ended up going to the local former poly and staying home for my undergrad studies and have been judged for it ever since (which as a university lecturer myself is a huge problem!). The bullying scarred me so badly at an early, formative age that it affected my academic achievement.

I forgot to mention that I was the only student in my school from a non White British background and the education was solely based around White C of E experience (and no, it wasn’t a church school!). Like a pp, it was old fashioned despite being the mid/late 90s. We also did embroidery, knitting, country dancing etc. And even flower arranging.

A teacher from the primary school who I had for my first two years there, was horrible to me. I strongly suspect she didn’t like Asians based on some comments she made to me and she constantly told me I was useless and stupid (because I couldn’t see the board, because my embroidery was messy and needed to be done again, because I didn’t wrap Christmas presents for charity prettily enough and my mother couldn’t sew costumes for the school plays). We attend the same church where she is “a greeter” and even now looks me up and down every time I walk in and mutters “here she is” tuts disapprovingly and shakes her head as if to say “still a waste of space”.

All very specific to my experiences I realise but as pps point out, a child may have the same teacher for several years and a very small peer group that they don’t fit into. These schools are often cliquey and set in their ways despite looking idyllic. About 6 years ago, I was given a secondment in a small village primary school one afternoon a week as part of my area of speciality. All the same problems I experienced were evident there. I spent a lot of time talking Year 6 children through the transition to the nearest high school (big, inner city environment) and found some of them were having extreme anxiety. Transition days at the High School were more anxiety provoking for some of them and they returned tearful and overwhelmed instead of reassured. Many were sent to private school instead, some as a last minute decision as there was a non-selective one nearby.

If I had the choice, and not everyone does, I’d go for a bigger school every time.

*No clubs except for choir, there just weren’t the numbers. No orchestra, no sports teams.

Limited sports in PE - we played a lot of rounders because team numbers didn’t matter. No facilities - everything was done in the playground, we didn’t have a gym or sports pitches.*

This is bringing back awful memories!

We were sent up to the local golf club for a few weeks one year for lessons as there was nothing else but rounders and netball.

I went to a small village school as did dh. We have been discussing this recently re Dd.

My niece did great at the same school, my nephew not so much. Around here is a divide here between farm children and non farm children. My nephew struggled being the only farm child. He continued to struggle when moved to high school and has only made one friend, lots of bullying.

Dd has a good group of friends from the local town via mums groups and toddler classes. I am keen to keep that. However they are actually all going to different schools.

I think for me it will be small school but with a focus on maintaining her existing friendships and activities as well. So any activities and groups will be in the town with school being in the village.

She starts nursery at the school in January which will let me see how she does. I'm not having a repeat of nephew. The problem for him was all the other farm children went to the town school so he was essentially alone at primary. We are talking classes of three or four.

I went to a small primary. All infants in one classroom and amounted to about 12 pupils! My dd also attended a small primary school 80 kids in whole school. I love small schools because of all the previously mentioned reasons and our way of getting around the friendship issue was to ensure dd went to all the extra curricular activities going (that she was interested in!) eg netball, running, trampolining, gymnastics, Brownies etc etc so that she has many friends outside school also. She's an only but far from lonely and I think has the best of both worlds.

I went to a small primary (about 48 children over years r to 6 so about 7 per year in three classes).

Academically it was good and the teachers were nice. In every other way it was pretty awful. We were new to the village and everyone else had known each other for generations which didn't help. So very limited friendship opportunities, stuck with people you didn't get on with or worse. Cliques and low level bullying. Awful school dinners that were brought in and not cooked on site. Had to eat them in the classrooms as there was no hall. The school field was separate and up the road, the village hall for indoor games was half a mile the other way. Don't remember doing any plays or concerts. I couldn't get out of there fast enough.

My DC's went to a single form primary which was much better but even then they were all doing each others heads in by about year 5 as there was no opportunity to mix the classes up each year.

I think this thread has clearly demonstrated that it is impossible to generalise. A lot of the issues reported by other posters are things that I don't recognise from our village school at all, particularly the lack of variety of activities. My children did things at school that I would never have dreamed of, it was one of the huge plus points for us in fact. They did sports that I would never of thought of taking them to had they not tried them at school, one of which my youngest now plays at county level.
So my advice would be not to think of small vs large but to directly compare the two or more schools that you are considering. Yes, there will be some common features to schools of a particular size but w hat really matters is how the individual schools tackle their challenges and utilise their assets. Plus what is right fir one child won't be right for another. There's a school a few miles up the road from us that parents practically knife each other for a place in, and I do know of some children that have been very happy there, but I wouldn't have sent mine there if you'd paid me - the ethos would not have suited them at all.
So whilst other people's experiences are interesting and useful to a degree, you really need a detailed look at what each school provides, and ideally to visit on a normal day, though I appreciate that is difficult at present. Hopefully things will change in due course as you really can get a totally different impression of a place whsn you see it actually in action.

@museumum

I live on the very edge of a city. So if I turn left I’m in the city and have the choice of a very large primary
Or if I turn right It’s the countryside and have the choice of a tiny primary.
The kids who go to the tiny primary are from probably a 10 mile circumference around the school as the village is SO small it’s doubtful there are many kids in it.

My son has just got gone from a school with a grand total of 37 children in the entire to secondary with 1200+ Where he didn’t know a single person

Honestly, I was absolutely worried sick and I’ve been beating myself up for putting him in the village school but I need not have done as so far (fingers crossed) he’s getting on amazingly and I don’t think you would ever know how a huge a change it’s been for him!

Yes, I went from the 48 student school to a 1200 student secondary which was just great, I was so much happier there.