Quick query - minimum class size in school

[Bozza]

Got a friend with a DS same age as mine. DS is registered for our village school and as far as I know there are 25+ registered already (he is not quite 3) so will be one full class.

However friend lives somewhere remote and reckons there will only be 3 kids at her DS's intake. I assumed that this would then mean that they would be in a mixed year class. But friend assures me that they will have a dedicated class and teacher just for the 3 of them. I'm not convinced she is right because her DS is only 2 1/2 and so not yet had much communication with the school. Just curious - how likely is this?

Not at all likely! If there are very few pupils it's entirely possible there will only be one teacher who is also the headteacher. my friend's DS goes to a very small village school in west wales. There are about 30 puils and it's split into 2 classes, infants and juniors. the head teaches the juniors. The school could double in size before they got another teacher.

I would say very unlikely, it sounds like a misunderstanding.

Unless of course she's somewhere like one of the Scottish islands where there could be just 3 children but even then I'm sure they would be taught with 11 year olds if there were so few of them.

No she definitely said that there were only 3 children in that intake but other children in other years. Wouldn't like to say where it is because of protecting her annonymity but it is mainland England. I thought that what marialuisa suggested sounded more likely ie a teacher split over two or more year groups. If it was like she said and there were average 3 kids in each year that would end up being 7 teachers for 21 kids. Anyway time will reveal all, but my curiousity wouldn't wait.

There are several very small village school around here (it's always funny when the local paper prints the "Class of ....." pictures because sometimes there's only ONE!) and AFAIK they are all like marialuisa's example - one junior teacher (usually the Head) and one infant teacher.

And as far as getting an extra teacher goes - when our school's intake, then set at 30, began creeping up because of new housing and general desirability, I was told the intake would have to be 60 before another teacher could be paid for. (Mind you this was before the more recent class size restrictions.) So 2 classes of 15, even with a wide spread of ages, is pretty desirable!

sorry Bozza - I didn't mean to imply you misunderstood just that your friend had somehow got it wrong!

There are only going to be 8 children in dd1's reception class (she starts in Sept) and they mix in with Year one.

Hope she likes someone out of the 8 as there's not much room for manoeuvre if not!

No Gem it was my post that was unclear becaue thats what I had understood by your post.

I wonder if your friend means they'll have a dedicated assistant, Bozza? My dd was one of two children starting in her year. There are only 30-odd children in the school in two classes, split by age, 5-8 then 9-12. They also have a p/t teacher and three assistants - it's brilliant! Max size in a mixed age class is 25; any larger and another teacher has to be employed. This is in Scotland, though, not England.

I don't think it applies to your rural friend Bozza, but just for general inf.:

Different schools do things different ways. If we hadn't moved ds1 would have gone to school in Oxfordshire. The yr1 & 2 were basically full (30), and the policy was children started school the term after they were 5. So some children got 2 terms reception, some 1 term, some 0. But because of the numbers in yr1 & 2 they had to employ another teacher to teach reception, even though for the first spring term she only had, say, 10 pupils. In the autumn term that teacher 'floated' in year 1, but particularly focussed on the 'summer-born' children, to give them a bit of a boost.

When my ds started reception 6 yrs ago,he was in a class of only 8. They did not mix with other yrs and had there own classroom and one teacher.
There was also another class of reception children with a similar number in . I remember wondering why there was 2 classes.
In previous yrs both reception classes had been full with 20 in each class but ds semmed to be a less popular yr.
However that class of 8 has now grown to a thriving 25 in yr 6.