To be nervous about an undersubscribed one-form entry infant school with declining birth rates?

[Cheepcheepcheep]

Coming to crunch time for Reception applications. I like the idea of a small school for late summer born DD, as does DH - and one of our options is a village school (we are on the edge of a town and would get in based on the last 3 years of data, once due to under subscription and twice on distance).

We’ve visited and it seems very friendly and welcoming. However, it’s one form entry and they only have 20 kids in the current reception. I’m nervous about the idea of going for it as I worry about funding, especially given the decline in birth rates and roll numbers.

Our alternative (and my preference) is a two form entry that we should get into on distance and which has been full this year.

Arguments for this school are the fact we both like it and a lot of her nursery friends are going there.

AIBU for worrying about the size and what that might mean for the future and funding?

To add, as DD is late august we are applying for a deferral - this is just the choice in case we don’t get it. DH has agreed the bigger school would be better if she starts at just turned 5 rather than just turned 4.

Not all Church schools get extra funding.

Is there a nursery attached to the small school, toddler group in the village? Can you get a feeling how many children will be coming through the school.

Really small schools can actually be better off than a school starting the journey to becoming small as they get additional scarcity funding.

One form entry schools with falling roll can struggle with funding whilst they still have classes of about 20 as they are too big to merge year groups, but are missing out on a third of their funding.

If it is infant age and does not go up to 11, I'd take school 1. The point about how long it takes to close a school if it ever came to that is one well made.

I would do the same.

A small school near me is also proposing to close with notice given of less than a year. If it's consistently below PAN it's very likely to close given the budget pressures on local councils.

I wouldn't say that's particularly small at all. The school that closed in my area and the other at risk have a handful of children per year group. My DS had 14 in his class last year, risen to 16 this year. We're pretty rural but it is normal here. And I'd say comparing to my nephew who is in a class of 30 my DS has a much better education. Obviously check ofsted reports for both.

I'd be nervous about a small school with a falling roll. Not so much the risk of closure but resources get so stretched as there are no economies of scale and you dont have the range of people on site to have much resilience.

Many schools in our locality have under 50 pupils, but will get scarcity funding and share staff across the schools, and obviously have mixed year groups.

Trust your gut, go for the bigger one.

well done you for deferring your summer born! The august born 4 year olds in my child’s reception class are so tiny they cry all the time and fall asleep on the carpet and can barely do phonics whilst the 5 year olds are confident and reading. It’s so unfair on the smaller ones.

It might not close, but in the current funding climate I’d be amazed if classes of twenty, with a full time teacher per class, remained viable long term. They must be making drastic cuts elsewhere. I’d fully expect composite classes - ie mixed year classes. Those are not necessarily a bad thing. But go into it with your eyes open - certainly where I live all the local primary schools are in deficit, the council has absolutely no money, there’s no way any of them can carry tiny class sizes indefinitely. People’s experiences of a few years ago aren’t really relevant anymore, the funding situation is absolutely dire and if I had an alternative of a decent size fully subscribed school then that’s what I’d go for.

I'd always go for the small village school every time. My dd went to a primary with less than 60 kids in the whole school and thrived.
The teachers knew all the kids and their parents, it was a lovely close school.
I was worried she'd struggle at the obviously much larger secondary but she's fine - it gave her a really good start to her education.

That would be a big school round here!
But yes, I get your concerns. There have been closures and threats of closures of some very small schools in our locality over the years as they've become unsustainable. Over the last 20 years school my children went to has gone from threatened with closure, to pleasantly full, then bursting at the seams now back to undersubscribed and a bit worrying again. Whilst a small drop in applications might not make a huge difference to a two or three form school it can be a real issue if your PAN is 10 and you only get 7 for a few consecutive years. Likewise 11 in 3 consecutive years is also a problem! It's harder to absorb even small variations in a small village school. So you're not unreasonable to have concerns.
However, if you feel strongly that the school is right for your child in all other respects I would probably go for it and cross that bridge if you come to it.
If it's anything like round here nothing would happen quickly even if the school was threatened and there would be time for you to consider your options. The school in the next village to ours was down to tiny numbers a few years ago and nobody could imagine how it could survive but there had to be a consultation period and in that time planning permission was granted for quite a few houses on the edge of the village and now it's thriving again. You really can't predict the future and whilst there's some risk I'd probably be inclined to make your decisions based on the here and now, nit on things which may or may not happen in the future.

It wouldn't have worked for my dd. She is very sporty & needed a 2 form entry to find friends with similar interests (she was never into dolls, dancing, make beleieve etc & the sexes tend to stop playing with each other around year 2/3 in my experience).

Plus, girls friendships get incredibly tricky around year 5 and there are lots of fallings out. Only having around 10 girls in the class your dd could be friends with is likely to cause her (& you) issues.

I would be more concerned about limiting social interactions at a small school as there are just a lot less kids to be friends with & not everyone 'gels' with everyone. Because of that I would never send any of my dc to a school with less than 60 per year (& in seniors there are over 350 a year). Bigger year groups suited us much better.

Only having around 10 girls in the class your dd could be friends with is likely to cause her (& you) issues.

I agree this is something to be mindful of. It's all lovely when they're in reception and play with anyone, but once they get to around 7 they really start to form smaller friendship groups. Unfortunately having such a limited pool of potential friends often causes lots of problems.

If its not a fluke year, I'd expect them to combine classes at some point.

I went to a very small primary in the 90's, there were 6 pupils in my year, 3 in the year below. My niece is currently in year 3 in the same school and there are 7 in her year, no talk of funding issues due to size. There are pros and cons but I think you get a better experience in a smaller cohort

20 isn't that small, they would probably combine age groups rather than close altogether.
Also there may be a COVID baby boom the year after, there is in my area
I would choose the school that's best for your child rather than worry too much about school size. A small class is a huge bonus at reception age even if they end up in a bigger class later on.

We’ve got mixed classes which I was a bit worried about. But it’s fine actually. No idea how they actually manage it but the school’s results are great so clearly they do, and my kids have never had a problem with it.

Not necessarily.

When my primary school did it in the 1980s we still ended up with class sizes of 25.

Also there is no guarantee that other parents may not have the same idea as the OP for this September.

My DD goes to an one form entry CofE school that was under subscribed for the previous 5 years. Her class has 30 children and had a waiting list of 13. The years before there are 18 to 25 children.

Likewise a friend in a different part of the SE sends her children to a one form entry state school. Her oldest child's year is under subscribed even though there were more births in that year than 5-6 years ago. Her youngest child year is full.

One of the issues is that people are becoming more knowledgable. So in our cases we like other parents know that school entry is based on distance not catchment, religion has nothing to do with it for CofE schools in our cases, and that OFSTED reports are completely unreliable.

My August 28th born 4 year old has never cried or fallen asleep at school. And is in the top group for phonics. She absolutely loves school. Just to give another perspective. We considered deferring her but decided against and so far it seems to be the right decision.

If reception children are crying daily at school that suggests an issue with the school.

That sounds great. Mine have always gone to small village schools. Our current school has 13 in reception and 86 in the whole school. It’s lovely and we have a strong involved community. The next village over has only 35 in the whole school and 2 classes (reception/Y1/2 & Y3/4/5/6). That’s a bit too small for me, but I personally wouldn’t want more than a 1 form entry. My friends dd had 90 in year for reception. 😳

There are some factors on which deferral are supposedly a good idea.

Any child that is a girl immediately falls foul of this.

(The other ones linked to boys are socio-economic class, ethnicity and SEN. )

My DS is late Aug too and he went to a primary with a 2 form intake and a secondary with 350 intake, he applied to Oxford Uni so didn’t do him any harm (no deferral, when he was at that age you had to go straight into year 1 if you deferred plus we didn’t see the need as he had been attending full time nursery and thriving). He was tiny, for years, but as I saw the fact he was in a big school was never a disadvantage. I think bigger schools often benefit from better facilities etc

@mindutopia I know of Primary schools with 6 form entry i.e 180 children per year!

My DDs have had as little as 16 in a year at one school, and as many as 120. My preference is two form entry as they get older. But friends have been very happy in village schools. There's no one right answer.

If you like the smaller school and think it will be a good fit, I'd go for it.

If everyone who likes a smaller school keeps opting for the big schools just in case, the numbers will fall. If enough people apply for where they think is best for their children things will stay steady unless there's a substantial change in birth rate, but even then parents want different things from schools.

I don't like large primary schools and neither does DH, probably because we both went to small primary schools ourselves and I find primary schools the size of some secondaries overwhelming.

My nearest primary is closing in July (inner London borough).

Sad but it is one form entry and it's really hard financially for smaller schools as no economy of scale. It was a Good Ofsted school but just isn't the number of kids in area and it's the most sensible school to close economically.

It had 24 in reception this year. It wasn't that the school itself was much less popular anywhere nearby - all the local schools are not full. But because it is small, it makes more sense to close it and redistribute the children to other larger schools with empty places.

Sad for the kids there of course.

I think you are wise to be thinking of the risk of closure - are other schools in the area under subscribed? Is there a general surplus of places in the local education authority area? This would increase the risk to the school.