Non-competitive school - views?

[GooseyLoosey]

I live in a village which has a thriving village primary school which I have always intended sending my children to. However, now it comes to it, I find I have 2 problems with the village school and would welcome other views as to whether these are real problems or in my head:

1. It has a non-competitive policy for sports. So you can't have races etc, although you can have team sports but the emphasis is on participating rather than winning. Rather oddly, the school does not seem to have a problem with spelling tests where there are prizes for performing well.

1. Second problem is that because it is a village school, it only has 6 classes to accommodate 7 years. They deal with this by having small classes in the first 3 years where all children are with their own age cohort and then mixing the years in the final four years on a strictly age basis - so the youngest in each year (my dcs) will always be with the year below and the class sizes rise to 34. Not sure given such large classes how the teachers can cope with mixed ages.

The only real alternative would be to send dcs to a private school which would be v.v. expensive.

Would anyone else have concerns about this school. Its ofstead reports are good.

1. I chose dcs school because (amongst other reasons) of its non-competitiveness. I think that with all tests/exams/clubs to come they will get plenty of it anyway, and liked the emphasis on the taking part bit for a change. Playground play is still about 'I won!' a lot anyway, I noticed... :-)
2. Would think this is more of an issue. I'd ask what their strategies are for coping with the age/ability differentiation in those big classes. There should be policies in place, I imagine. (I went to a school like that myself, and don't recall the age differences ever being an issue. Can't say how well the differences in ability were dealt with; although I do remember special tasks to move onto if you were finished with the regular stuff..)

Thanks for that - I guess for some reason I just think competition is important (although don't like excessive testing either) but have never really looked at why I think that and so would value other people's views.

My dds' first primary school had a non-competitive policy, I think. We had "healthy challenge" day instead of sports day, and every child took part and got personal scores for competing, rather than having winners and losers.

Actually, I liked it. being quite keen on sport but not actually likely to win prizes at it, it sounds ok to me. One of my dds is not at all competitive, the other one is, but the one who is just challenged herself, and tried hard to do her best anyway.

Competitive-minded children will be able to work out who's best anyway, if they want to.

It's a mystery to me why some areas are okay to be competitive in and others are not. Why should someone who is good at sport(maybe only at sport) be denied their moment of glory but the one who is good at academic subjects get theirs? By the way, I can't stand overtesting either.

A big problem is games teacher. My experience, and that of others I tlak to is that GTs focus obsessively on the ones that are good at sport.
I was crap at sports, never saw that as a big loss, but in these days of obesity and console kids, it matters that kids get to run around and leanr to take care of their bodies.
GTs who scream at fat kids aren't helping anyone, and the tradition of hiring people of damaged intellect as "teachers" for sports doesn't make that any better.

GTs in the main are not up to that.

In the case of a little school, it's hard to see how you can compete in sports "fairly", and it may just be a practical thing.

I think if the school is used to having mixed classes that they will be very good at making it work well.

Can't see problem with the competitiveness thing.

I wouldn't be worried. Our village school has mixed age groups - even Yr 1 and 2, seems to work well. Remember classes have teaching assistants now so there are two "teachers" there and at our school the 2 sets of kids in each class do get different work set.

I guess team sports will be good for team working skills, etc.

But I think the most important thing is, if your kids go to the village school they will have good friends in the village. Which is important as they get older and want to play with their mates in the park, etc.

Thanks for advice all. Have helped me make up my mind to send.