To worry about primary class size of 22

[hooochycoo]

My DS starts school this year and his primary school has an unprecedented intake and his class will be 22. Reassure me that that's ok?

I moved my ds into a class is 22 in a state school. The years below and above both have 30....the school overall is popular enough. The DC in his year are also mostly very able. I could be paying £10k a year for this type of education, but just got lucky.

24 is the perfect sized class, IMO.
Norm in England is 30 though. (can go higher once they get into Yr3)

My DD is in P1 and her class has 23 kids. DS had 18 in his P1 (not enough tbh). He is now in a composite class and that is capped at 25 too.

No TAs here though.

My niece is in a Year 5 class of 37. One teacher, TA for statemented pupil.

I teach secondary and I have one class of 34 this year, my room only seats 32 so unless someone is off one of them has to have my desk and another sits at the small table I usually store books on. We are full and then some but people keep winning appeals.

22 is about perfect, I would think. 5 x 22 though is a large intake!!

Around here primary school classes seem to average 30 (give or take). I am sure your son will be fine.

Their is 23 in DS reception class! Its brilliant! Private style education for free!

cheerfulyank - similar here (also in the US in state school).

We have 11-12 in our kindergarten classes, up to 18 in first grade, then the classes gradually get larger till they're around 25 maximum.

We have about 100-120 children per year so they hire as many teachers as they need to keep the class sizes down.

When DD2 was in 4th grade her class had 22 kids in it and the school were very apologetic...

90 four year olds in one room? It must have been utter chaos!

the average size in England is 26 iirc thru primary & secondary. I can find the sources for that if anyone wants.

22? Wow that would be brilliant to have such a small class. Now I DO worry about my DCs Y3 class which has 38 children in it...

22 is low and you are lucky. When DDs class tally topped 30, we removed both our children and went private. I realise how fortunate we are to be able to afford this but when I see that both DCs are in classes where the head count is in the mid teens, I see how their learning has come on so quickly and how much attention they get from their teachers, it makes our scrimping worth it!

The maximum in Scotland in primary 1 is 25. If there are more pupils another teacher should be in the classroom.
No other year group has the same restriction on class size. Where I am the maximum class size is 33.

There are 20 in ds2's composite class of P3/4/5

When he was in P1 there were 8 of them, not a composite class either!

Sorry, composite classes have a limit of 25 too.

HolidayCriminal - I assume that's the mean average? I think probably the issue with England is that urban and suburban areas almost always take the full permitted 30, but rural areas often have much smaller classes. So maybe the mean isn't a representative experience?

I think the meaning of mean is that it IS a representative experience!
Median might be better way to measure, but that's similar meaning.
I'll go find the stats...

Class sizes in England.

above 27 in recent yrs in KS1 (was 26 only recently) .

This is more authoritative but they create a ratio of all qualified teaching staff in the school which makes it hard to interpret.

In 2012 less than 3% of KS1 classes were oversize and the avg for KS2 still 27.

Daily fail having usual Wails but still saying avg secondary size is under 22 which is under OECD avg.

I have a strong feeling that English primary schools are more likely (than other countries) to have a 2nd qualified adult regularly in the room (TA of sorts). So the international comparisons are really complicated. Pupil premium at DC school is being spent on extra TA time.

22! Wow! I know its a long time ago(90s) but my DS was in primary when the new rule stated no more than 30 in infants. They just shuffled the juniors and my DS ended up with 45! for the rest of his primary education. No option to move as all local schools did the same.

Rural Scotland can have very small classes. My primary school was big and popular and had composite classes in the mid 20s (this was in the 1970s), my secondary school had classes of 22 for classes like English, Maths and French but spilt us further into classes of 16 for practical subjects like science, HE, or Art. There was no point having the resources for bigger classes because higher up in the school there would never be e.g. 30 in a O grade Physics class because there were always

When my DD started school, they put on an extra class so class sizes could be limited to around 22 for the first year. After that the classes were mixed up and one class less for the next year group to increase class sizes to the norm of 30 or so.

Wow. We live outside the UK and have been looking at schools for DS. We've seen class sizes up to 35. There's only ever one adult in the class. The school we are likely to send him to has class sizes of 30 and one support assistant for the whole school. And she only works half days. I have to keep telling myself that this country ranks way higher than the UK in both education league tables and kids' happiness, otherwise the pupil teacher ratios would scare me!

22 is great but I think the main issue is tge teacher. 22 with a poor teacher is not in any way better than 30 with a capable teacher. Also the danger eith class that small is if one or two leave the group is so small that you can have friendship, groups,exclusion issues ime. Speaking as parent whose seen class of 21 turn into 18 with lots of problems, bullying, cliques etc.

So imo its teacher, teacher,teacher.

Our reception class is 30 but with an excellent teacher and at least 2 TAs in the class at any one time. One of the TAs is also a qualified teacher. I think that is better than a class size of 22 with only one teacher tbh.

The reception cohort for next year at The Cub's school is 61 split over 2 classes. The Cub's class size is 25.

ThisWillBeFineTiggaxx