That primary schools in Essex don’t have classes of 45 kids

[Dabralor]

Hello. Just read the most bizarre article in the Sunday times about a family - they pay 45 grand a year to fund their children through private school, supposedly to avoid them having to use the state sector where there are ‘often’ 45 children in a class. Surely this can’t be true? I’ve never heard of this is 25 years teaching primary, albeit not in Essex.

(For those concerned, the family can no longer afford gym membership, beauty treatments or more than one foreign holiday a year. And moving to Dubai is not an option.)

Mine all grew up in Essex and we never had that many kids. No.

Someone living on a council estate now has a much more secure and affordable living situation than they would as a family in the private rental sector, where you're only a rent rise or a landlord selling up away from having to move your entire life at two months' notice, and where housing benefit will not cover your full rent should you be out of work. (And where renters cannot decorate their own homes nor have pets.) Council accommodation is like gold dust in the SE where private rents are crippling and impoverishing families.

That the Times uses this to indicate growing up poor shows how out of touch they are.

I think there’s a tendency to catastrophise to justify such an expensive decision. I sometimes speak to parents considering moving to state from private school and they are very worried about the move.

£45k is an awful lot, I presume that’s 2 children?

The Times is not a paper you can trust now. Plenty of made up stories , mainly about "over-taxed" rich people and their problems.

Schools are actually struggling to fill classes purely because of how insecure, expensive and shit renting in the SE is, no way are classes that big when schools in London and Essex are closing.

The only time I saw this was when PE classes got doubled up if a member of staff was absent or had to go to SLT meeting. This was very frequent meaning there would be 60 kids with one member of staff. Very stressful for the staff

I had a class of 38 in y4 about 20 years ago. Haven't had one that big since though.

I’m on Essex border and my children’s school has 26. Pan is 30 per class (2 form entry) I have never heard of anywhere being over PAN

many village primaries are closing because they are in such low demand

It’s 32 in ours (Oxfordshire) but three are joint with the SEN classroom so it’s only 29 full time.

I had a push notification from the times this morning saying “how to secure bursaries and scholarships at top private schools” when I clicked through the article was just about how poor private schools now offer less of these due to VAT. Click bait

My SiL has had a class of 60, but it was a team teaching thing and there was 2 teachers and 2 TAs. The noise though!

A Greek holiday for four, what’s the minimum cost there? £2k?

Sounds as if this totally real couple could do with some work on their maths and decision making skills.

Quite tired of all this ridiculous made up crap in the Reformograph.

How many teachers and TAs?

This is the kind of rumour that starts from a misunderstood grain of truth. Our local schools have a sort of open plan, play based learning model in the early years, so for a couple of hours there are multiple classes all mingling around the different zones. There are multiple teachers, but I can see it's stressful for all of them and they might make a comment along the lines of having 60kids to watch/teach.

I also find those who aren't 100% sure they've made the right decision to privately educate are the most vocal at tearing state schools down, latching onto anything that proves them right.

A PAN might be 45. This results in 3 mixed age classes over 2 years (90 /3). Thats fairly standard. Maybe the Essex parents didn’t understand PAN and class sizes are different. The paper must know this is probably untrue. I agree with others: infant size class 30 max and no school will have 45 in a class for KS2 so it’s rubbish.

My youngest is at a school in London and they had 38 or 39 in a class at one point. It is a 3 form entry but so many kids had left by year 3 they needed to make savings and combined them into 2 classes. More kids have left since then so I think it’s down to about 35.

That might make sense. Here classes are often mixed year group with some schools having 3 year 3/4 classes for example. That gives an intake of 45, with children in classes of 30.

My youngest is at a school in London and they had 38 or 39 in a class at one point. It is a 3 form entry but so many kids had left by year 3 they needed to make savings and combined them into 2 classes. More kids have left since then so I think it’s down to about 35.

I know for sure it’s only one teacher. Several TAs - more than would be in a normal class but I’m not sure exactly how many.

There was 46 in my English class in secondary school in the 90s. We took it in turns to sit at tables.

Dreadful. The children will be struggling to learn and I'm sure the teacher and TAs are exhausted.

They were also allowed to hit the kids to keep behaviour under control🤣

It’s illegal to be above 30 in ks1. However some London schools might struggle with numbers due to right of LAC and Send dc. KS2 is different.

At my junior/primary school 1959 to 1965 there were 48 in my class. There were 3 classes per year, streamed A, B and C though not sure how many were in the year overall. Essex/Greater London border. It was an excellent school and quite a lot of us passed the 11 plus (but not as many as in the class of the pp upthread).

My children have just finished GCSEs in Essex and the classes were max 30. In fact, after options started on Y10, many classes were smaller. French was about 15 and my son's triple Sci physics class was 8!! (only the kids doing comp Sci AND triple). State school. My friend's child went to a private school in Essex (since nursery) and did significantly worse than my children even though she worked hard. Chose sizes were small but the teaching was awful. The school shut down in the summer but it was too late for her and her parents who sacrificed all those tens of thousands.