Boy heavy class

[Jennybeans401]

Dd was bullied at her previous school (Y5) and I removed her a few

On Mumsnet they are!! Nasty unruly little things 😉.

I'm sorry your DD has had such a horrible time.

I sent my DS to a school that has a poor Ofsted - it had just had a leadership change and was very clearly on the up. I think it can be (but not always) a good time to join a school as with the right leaders things improve rapidly and your child gets all the benefit of that. My DS Scholl recent ofsted saw them get outstanding in 3 of the 5 categories inspected and good overall.

I wouldn't worry about it being boy heavy (as you may guess from my first sentences) - boys are pretty cool (as are girls)!

No they aren't but in the secondary school system they commit over 90% of the sexual assaults, and girls were the victim 80% of the time.

There were over 5000 cases in the uk over the recent 3 year period.

So OP is absolutely right. Primary is less of a problem but still a consideration.

A better question would be to ask why the sex ratio is so unbalanced when in nature the ratio of males to females is almost exactly 50/50.

This imbalance was never seen when I was young, so what's changed?

Sometimes it just happens. DD was in a class of 21 girls and 6 boys from reception. However that then put off other boys from joining / staying as there were fewer similar children, so despite significant churn in the class, the in-balance stayed throughout primary.

(Just like you could toss a coin 30 times and get 25 heads and 5 tails or whatever, it doesn't mean that on average it comes out 50-50.)

It's pot luck, you don't know the character/personality of any child until you get to know them. I don't remember such imbalanced classes in terms of gender though, ours was evenly balanced when I was young.

I would try the new school and see how it goes. If it's too rowdy or your dd hates it you haven't lost anything.

DS was in a class of 21 boys and 9 girls at reception age. Within a few months a couple of families had relocated out of the area and new families moved in, and the balance started to change (we live in an area with military and travellers). By the time he was in year 6 the girls outnumbered the boys.

My DD is in a boy heavy class too. The only issue is that there are less options for girl friendships, so we have had a slightly intense best friend relationship to deal with. Other than that it’s fine, she gets on well with the boys too and it’s a lovely class.
The special measures bit is what would concern me. However, if you’re home schooling now and it’s not really working out then I don’t know what harm would come from giving it a go. Worse case scenario is that DD doesn’t like it and you’re back where you are now.

My sons primary class had 26 boys and 9 girls. I think it worked out well for the boys. PPs have queried about behaviour and such like and I think having so many boys helped. The boys could be themselves. There was the usual disruptive few who generally were in with the football gang. But because there were so many of them, there were also groups of geeky boys, academic boys, kind gentle responsible boys, the we-play-any-weird-sport-except-football boys. Etc. It meant the boys could be masculine without being boisterous and disruptive. Which was so nice.

Obviously it was a little harder for the girls, but friendships were common across the genders. There was less of the catty girl problems, because boys don't work like that. But there was 9 of them. So just enough to find another friend if you fell out with someone.

So basically I wouldn't let a boy heavy class put you off.

(Though by year 6 the classroom stank of boy sweat and lynx, but some problems can't be helped!)

DD was in boy-heavy classes throughout her time at school, a trend which continued through secondary school. Just a freak year, I think. But our experience of that was wholly positive, @Jennybeans401 we actually found the boys to be very caring and quite protective of the few girls in the class. Of course her close friendship group from school is boy-heavy as a consequence (1 girl and 6 boys), but it has never been a problem.

And it's not as if it led to an issue over forming female friendships – at university she lived in an all-girls house in her second and fourth years.

Also agrees with @Notjusta that a new HT can make a massive difference. DD's secondary modern was in special measures shortly before she started there but a really strong HT and revamped SLT turned it around, clamped down hard on bullying and other issues, encouraged the more academic children, really ramped up the atmosphere of the school as a community working together etc etc. It is now over-subscribed.

My children have been in classes where the ratio of boys and girls was massively skewed and it worked out fine but I would also be worried. 4 girls means a very small potential friendship pool and if they are paired up or one is a Queen Bee type who dominates then it will negatively affect your dd who needs her self esteem repaired. Ofc there's a chance that things could work out fine but it's a massive risk to take when your child needs her confidence restoring.

Do you plan to move before secondary school ?

All through primary there were 12 girls and 27 boys in my year group. Having more boys was never a problem although there was plenty of drama within the girls!

Most of the primary schools where I live are boys or girls only. The one closest by is mixed. My dd will be starting school next year and she always says she wants to go to school with boys and girls. I was all for it and it was top of my list for applications. However, I was since chatting with a neighbour whose dc just started and the class is 5 girls to 29 boys and it has put me right off.
For one thing, dd was very excited to start pre school but there’s been lots of problems with her getting picked on by two of the boys. She wants to play dinosaurs and cars with them and they are into superheroes which she loves, but they won’t let her play with them because she’s a girl. They shout at her and gang up on her. She is too small to even understand why they don’t want to be friends.
I don’t want her to be in a small minority of girls in primary school. She might get along with some of the boys but I think realistically she will not end up having a close friendship with them. I’ve seen the way the kids interact around here and they just don’t mix that way (probably in part because most of the schools are single sex).
As pp said, there’ll be a small pool of girls and if they don’t get on that could be a big problem. It’s also a different story when they’re six to when they’re twelve.
So yes I think it’s a legitimate concern but the low standards in the school is also very concerning.