To think that a class limit of 30 is overly restrictive For infants

[ReallyTired]

My parents have new neighbours and they have a six year old boy who is currently being forced to travel 5 miles to primary. The lea is providing transport, but there are four primaries in walking distance. The sheer distance makes hard for the little boy to socialise with classmates. His parents are hoping to get a place in a local school in year 3.

I feel that one of the primaries could go over 30 children in a class with the children melting. Use of an extra ta could help with the logistics of 31 children. Why are year 2 children so much more fragile than year 3 children?

High performing countries like Singapore often have more than 30 in a class.

Yabu - 30 is too big as it is.

Ds1's year 2 class is 25 and we've been very lucky with ds2's reception class because there're only 18.

But the current year 3 class is 13 and year 4 was 17 so they put them into one class of 30.

I've helped out a couple of times in the school and trips and such and the difference in the class of 30 and the class of 18 is massive. So much more gets done so much more quickly in the class of 18, even though they're much younger and 'should' be more difficult to manage at 4 than at 8.

I wouldn't want my dc in a class of 30+. It's the reason we travelled out of catchment to a small school.

Lambsie my son never got a chance to be educated In a mainstream school the school he was due to go to made it blindingly obvious they didnt want him he goes to a great special school but inclusion does not always happen in practice.

I have SEN and was in mainstream school in the 80s.I'm fairly sure that nonon of my classmates would have noticed, they just knew I was way ahead at reading and socially awkward as hell.

Also my closest secondary school was 6 miles away. None of us 'melted' either. 5 miles is no distance!!!

Children start school with a huge variety of abilities and needs. Theoretically by junior school they should be able to sit down and listen quietly for long periods of time, and communicate by reading and writing.

However, this isn't expected of 4 year olds entering reception. They have home corners and outside spaces and trays of construction toys and sand and water. Some children enter school on the verge of reading chapter books, some don't yet have the ability to sound words out - and this is all within the normal range.

It might be theoretically possible for a greater number of TA's and teaching assistants to share a specially designed classroom, but the reality is most schools were built 50-100 years ago and schools have to use the space available - including playground space, dining space, P.E space and assembly space.

All this means that adding the odd child to the class does make a difference - and once you decide that 31 is OK, why not 32?

Unless you have so many extra pupils that an extra class is justified, there is always the possibility that in some years there will be more applicants than spaces and somebody will have to travel 5 miles to school.

YABVU.

It is a shame that there aren't more schools and that children have to travel, but thirty in a class is already a lot. There has to be a limit somewhere, otherwise what happens when there are four children that need to be accommodated in an already full class so they don't have to travel? What if there's more children than that?

Traveling to school doesn't actually do children any harm, whereas having too many children in a class could be harmful to individual children's education.

Feel for the family, but 30 so many, very little time as it is and very little one to one available for struggling children.

And a few months later..."There are 31 pupils in yr1 at our local school and my ds has to travel 5 miles to attend a school with only 28 in the class. Surely if there are 31 then one more wouldn't make much difference."
Or one more to 33 or 34 and so on.
In the 50s I was in a class of 40 and so it goes on. 30 is the optimum number for a reason.

Little ones can get lost and overwhelmed in bigger classes.

It's the same principe as swimming lessons. Smaller groups with non swimmers who need lots of 1:1 to swim and might struggle stay on task because they aren't used to a structured environment. Larger groups for able swimmers who can all swim together well and follow instructions as a group and pay attention.

Agree with most posters on here, with the exception of those complaining about the needs of children with SEN impinging on others.

What I'm really puzzled about is why the OP is so invested in the education of a child who is no relation to her, and is not even her neighbour, but her parents'!

There are a very small amount of children who have SEN that may impinge on the rest of the children, those with behavioural problems that cannot be managed properly in MS and violent behaviour may put others at risk, but they are very few.

As others have said, in Scotland the limit at that age should be 25 (an aspiration was set of 18 but that isn't being met in most places). Some councils play with the rules around the edges and have team taught classes (I was at one meeting where they proposed a team taught class of 49- 49 children and 2 adults, anyone see any problem getting that many people in a room and expecting them to be able to hear most of the time? to get proper attention from the teachers?). After p2 it moves to 33. Considering that the education at primary is much less time sitting at desks than it was in my day, that's a lot of children to accommodate.

If a class is full it is full. I know the frustration of sitting on a waiting list for a school and preparing to go to appeal, but I also know the benefits of smaller classes. When this comes up in our local paper (which it does a lot thanks to the council's complete lack of ability to see a surge in the birth rate, and their brilliant idea of closing schools a year or so before all the birth rate surge babies were due to start school) someone invariably comments that they were in a room with 50 children in the 1950s and it did them no harm - I think we can hope for better for our children.

I also have a child with Asperger's - presumably it would really annoy you that he takes up a space in a 'normal' class, with a minimal amount of TA time to help him. Presumably you'd have us traipsing across town (not sure what we would do about getting our other child to school, or should the siblings of additional needs children also be denied a place?) every morning and afternoon.

You cannot insist on a particular mainstream school but what a local authority cannot say is no mainstream school is suitable since mainstream is meant to be for all children.

I'm slightly aghast at the suggestion that children with additional needs should be moved out to make room for other children, so that they can have the social benefits of being near their friends.

Surely it is more likely to be children with special needs who may need help with the social side of things? We see many threads on here about children not getting invited to parties because of SEN, or finding it hard to make friends.

We are a society which is working its way towards better inclusivity - if children with SEN are struggling in classes of 30, then the answer is smaller classes, or better support, not shipping them out to make room for others.

I understand that 31 is really no different to 30 children.

But 32 is really no different to 31.
And 33 no different to 34....

There has to be a limit although I do get that it is unfair on the boy.

I don't understand why 5 miles is a big deal. Loads of children travel much further and manage to have local friends too.
Really not liking the attitude of bigger classes to benefit one child or discriminating against those with additional needs.

The best Reception class I ever had was 34 with a TA on Wednesday morning only. It isn't the number of children often, the dynamic, range of needs etc is more important- but if course you don't know that in advance. So you could have 25 more challenging children or 34 easy to manage.

I was in a class of 36 in primary school in the 70's and I think it did me no harm - I was a fairly able biddable child and the teacher was lovely.

Whether she was able to give sufficient attention to all children in the class is another matter. In the 70's (and certainly 50's and 60's) there was still a requirement for manual workers, skilled or unskilled so perhaps it didn't matter if some children drifted through school, in and out of the headmaster's office.

The same cannot be said now.

I read somewhere that it is only a handful of children per LA that could not under any circumstances be accomodated in ms.

Just to add SEN isn't what I meant by challenging. Having a very wide range of ability, a group that didn't get on, poor class dynamic- that makes it challenging. My lovely class of 34 had 1 child with very very complex needs.

If the parents were that bothered about their child attending a local school why didn't they check out school places before they moved? This is a 6 year old not a child in reception.

If the parents were that bothered about their child attending a local school why didn't they check out school places before they moved?

Maybe because they had specific reasons to move where they moved to?

The school.my on was due to go to would have been obliged to take him with it being a catholic school they had there own criteria a baptised catholic ,lives in the parish andhey had a sibling attending the school all of which my son met he got a place there but they made it obvious they didn't want him he is just four! If all.children have the right to mainstream education than schools need to be far more inclusive and have far more support for kids with complex needs I.m glad he doesn't go there now I have been completely put off mainstream schools for children with my sons needs he is not violent but he does have ASD and learning difficulties .

Then it is unfortunate (but still not that big a deal).

Loads of kids round here are drive in from that distance. If you live rurally 5 miles is a tiny distance.