To send my child to a school with 8 classes per year

[Mabelthebore]

This is a high school. It has a very good reputation but I am concerned about the huge size of the school. I believe there are 24 kids per class (8 classes per year group). Other alternative school has only 2 classes per year group, mixed reports about it and not as wide variety of subjects as the bigger school. I fear my daughter might be a bit lost in the big school. She is coming from a small village junior school.

I went from a one form entry primary school to an 8 form entry secondary at 11 and it was absolutely fine.

My dd school has 315 per year. No issues.

With 2 classes how could you ever give a good range of gcse choices?

Also think it's too small for varied friendship groups at that age.

24 kids in a class is really good

Eh? This is incredibly common in rural areas - tons of tiny feeders into one big secondary. I teach in one such tiny feeder. I can't think of any child over years and years who hasn't coped due to the size of the secondary.

I don’t think think this is a big deal. My old high school was 9 classes – it was a great, well performing school with good pastoral care. Great sense of community. The high school in our current town is one of the best rated schools in the country, with good parent and pupil feedback, and has 12 classes. Over half of the kids there also come from little village schools.

Sometimes the "benefits" of big schools are over-hyped.

Just because they're twice the size, doesn't mean they offer twice as many subject options, especially at GCSE and A level.

A lot of them just do "more" of the same thing, i.e. multiple science labs, multiple tech labs, multiple food tech classrooms, all doing the same thing!

Back in my day, it was 6 forms per year. You'd think that would mean six different levels of ability for the staples like Maths and English. No, there was just top, middle and bottom, but done twice, i.e. top middle and bottom of forms A to C then top middle and bottom of forms D to F, so even though six forms, there were only three different classes of ability.

Same happened with French in year 10. Roughly 50 pupils doing French, but instead of a top and bottom group, it was again split into A to C and then D to F, so two groups of equally mixed ability!

The is true, High Schools can be too small, larger schools will be able to offer a wider range of subjects etc,. 8 Form entry is fewer than 200 if there are 24 per class, my last job there were 6 forms per year with 190 coming into Year 7.

That's smaller than average where I grew up. We had 9 classes of 30 per year.

For a state school in the UK to have only two forms a year would be highly unusual, 8 is very normal. It's very difficult for small schools to survive financially, and you're right, the curriculum opportunities would be limited.

As pointed out by most people here, 8 classes per year is very common for secondary, our closest high school has recently expanded to a 10 form entry.

Thats completely normal.

We live rural but lots of villages and all the villages travel to the town for secondary school and thats a completely normal number. I would be impossible for every village to have their own schools for tiny numbers and enough staff to teach them.

What secondary school has only 48 kids per year, my infants and juniors had that and secondary is where all the little local infants and junior schools joined the big school.

Primaries can get away with it because only need 1-2 trained general year group teachers but secondaries need multiple specialists in each subject (English, Math, Science, Georgraphy, History, Music, All the Technologies, Art, Computing, Languages etc...) so you can't just have one in every village.

My own secondary school had seven forms per year group and it was one of the smaller schools in my town. We were quite limited when it came to GCSE options so I would be wary of a smaller school from that perspective.

That’s perfectly normal size for secondary. DS was at one primary with 4 classes per year, then a little one with a 1 1/2 classes - ie a Yr 6 and a Yr5/6 etc. Secondary was 8 classes, sixth form college 1200 students per year

My DC go to a 10 form entry secondary school, in my opinion schools with less than 6 forms per year are too small for teenagers. The school has lots of pastoral staff and lots of sport/drama/art opportunities.

I currently teach in a school with 11 classes per year group - we have about 1800 pupils in total. I feel that larger schools can have better resources in terms of teaching, SEN support, physical resources, pastoral services etc because of how the funding model works. There will generally be more extra curricular activities to choose from and a wider range of GCSE and A Level options too. Pupils at our school seem to find their tribe fairly easily, and staff are well-practiced in sorting out any problems. No school is perfect, but it ve Lao chosen a larger school (not mine!) for my own kids for these reasons.

I went to one that size. It was fine.

is that not a normal school size??? I went from a class of 6 to a cohort of 300 and I don't recall even thinking about it for a second, I just was excited to finally meet some people

Totally normal school size. My DD’s high school had 14 classes per year!!

That's less kids per year than my husband's primary school growing up. Should be fine but you know your child best.

Don't discount the school on size. There are lots of good things about larger schools e.g. bigger pool to find your tribe, more scope for running niche subjects or clubs. Round here most primaries have 2-4 classes per year, so 2 per year at secondary sounds small!

It’s a normal size for a secondary and the more kids, the more facilities and extracurricular. My dc went from a village school with 8 in each year group (mixed age classes) to secondary schools with 150-250 in each year. Honestly, within a few days of secondary I think they’d forgotten being anywhere else! Your dc will be just fine.

There are definitely benefits from economies of scale. Plus more chance to find your tribe etc. 8 form entry schools often split into 2 bands for timetabling lessons which makes the school seem smaller.

My DSes went from a 1 form entry primary to a 9 form entry comp. They didn’t have any problems with the size of the school. I went from a village school to an 8 form entry comp. Had a great experience.

Not sure how to vote. YANBU to send her, YABU to be overly worried.

I did this too, and liked it. I was very quiet and shy, and actually it suited me to be in a big school where I could blend into the background (in primary I was always top of the class, which I didn't enjoy all that much).

And yes, much more scope for clubs etc, so I was able to find other quieter people and made good friends. Having said that, I did transfer with my best friends from primary, which was a help at the start.

Thanks for all the replies. Wow, I did not realise these numbers were so common.
Where we are an average yearly intake is approx 100 students so 4 classes would be the norm.

She has been incredibly happy at her small village primary, has made lovely friends and grown hugely in confidence. It is such a lovely nurturing school where everyone knows each other so moving to a much bigger school is quite daunting. However I appreciate all of the reassuring comments and I am hopeful she will settle in well and find her tribe.