A level class sizes

[Tripilates]

Just wondering what average A level class size is across the country in the state sector (I'm aware independents have much smaller classes..) and if there's any consistent difference between schools which have 6th forms and 6th form colleges? My DD is in A2 History class of 25 at a local state 6th form college. I feel this is way too large for the poor teacher (same teacher for all lessons) there will be limited chance for discussion and feedback with so many, and as for the essay marking...

[Ta1kinpeece]

raspberry
Have a look at a map of southern England ....
in the west, start at Christchurch, draw a line up to Andover, across to Basingstoke and then to Alton and then to Fareham and then to the Isle of wight and then back to Christchurch
that is the Symonds catchment !

[bloomburger]

5, 13, 6 and 9 students in each of DDs a level classes. State secondary.

[CauliflowerSqueeze]

To whoever thought that a class of 3 for AS drama is amazing - it's absolutely not. It's not a reformed subject yet, so if one or two of the others drop out or stop at AS, the third will not be able to do the A level.

To whoever is emailing the director of studies about the class sizes - what are you hoping they do? Ask some to leave? Employ an extra teacher in the middle of the term to work for 4 hours a week?

[raspberryrippleicecream]

Thanks Talking. Our range would definitely be wider! Very rural county

[Rosieposy4]

I had no idea PS was so selective, had a very interesting chat with one of their senior staff at an AQA meeting and was amazed at how big it was.
I teach in a good state comp with 600 in aixth form and this year have 2 y12 classes of 25 and 27 in Biology. They are not all super keen hard working students. ( many are)
The marking is already killing me and i will have them all for 2 years unlike my current y13s who are 13 and 15 in number.

[BlueGazebo]

6, 9 and 14 in DS's classes.

[Bobochic]

I just don't get all the fuss about class sizes. I live in Paris and both my DSSs had class sizes of 35+ (up to 38) in their last two years of school. It was absolutely fine and they were extremely well prepared when they arrived at university in the UK.

[Ta1kinpeece]

Rosie
I'm not sure why you describe Symonds as so selective
in the A level track, 3 A* grades is nothing to write home about

bobo
I utterly and totally agree with you about the small class fallacy
evidenced based policy demolishes it completely

[Bobochic]

Indeed. DD is in a class of 34 (equivalent of Year 8). The class is split into two groups for lab work (one hour per week of Physics-Chemistry, Biology and Technology) though there are other full sized classroom based science lessons and each of Maths and French have one half-sized class per week. But most of the time all 34 are together. Sometimes I think it just forces teachers to be a lot more organized and disciplined when they have a large class and that this is no bad thing :)

[AtiaoftheJulii]

Symonds is more selective than e.g. Farnborough, and more selective than many school sixth forms, who might only require Bs at GCSE for the planned A level subjects.

(Symonds and Farnborough got almost exactly identical results this year.)

Re class sizes - I haven't looked at any evidence, and that does sound interesting. But thinking of for example my dd's English A level class - so much of their time was spent in discussion, and it's hard to see how that would be as easy or as satisfying if the class was twice the size. I can see a big class working with a very teacher-led style, but I don't think that's always the ideal.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Bobo, perhaps teachers in France don't have as much contact time overall in their hours, or don't have to do so much paperwork, or meet ridiculous targets. It's impossible to compare class sizes with different school systems.

[Rosieposy4]

Any school that only lets kids with A or A* s do A levels is selective.
We ask for Bs for the sciences, and are often over ruled by SLT and students with Cs are allowed on our courses.
It makes a massive difference, occasionally over time you get a class that is nearly all As or A*s and it is much easier to teach them, and they do also tend to be much more motivated so less time needed to chase them up for work.
It is naive to think that class size does not matter in the overall educational experience. Yes we have maintained our results as class sizes have risen, though i have never classes quite this big in sixth form, but it is the whole quality of your educational experience.
At university lecture theatres are designed ti hold many students, and the acoustics reflect this, in additon most courses will supplement that with seminars and tutorials where the class size is often dramatically smaller.
In many schools the rooms are not designed to fit in so many students, it can be hard to hear at the back, hard to see the board from the odd angle you have had to be jammed into ( i have my y12 in allocated rows and they take it turns to be in a fromt row so everyone takes a share in the poor visual and auditory experience from the back row).
We don't have enough practical equipment so experiments are done in twos or threes, a much poorer prep for uni life.
I simply do not have enough time to give all the students the attention i would like to give them, and despite marking until 11 every night this week i have a giant backlog of marking and will have to shift quite a bit of this sixth form marking to self or peer assessment, when there is far more evidence to back up the value of quality feedback.

[noblegiraffe]

^I utterly and totally agree with you about the small class fallacy
evidenced based policy demolishes it completely^

And I have heard experts warning to be cautious about accepting the 'evidence' when it is totally at odds with your own experience. I know that class size makes a huge difference at sixth form because I have taught large and small classes and observed the effects. Teaching a large class is much less personal, the marking less effective because there is so much more of it. I suspect that where class sizes are seen not to make a difference are where students are allowed to fail, and the responsibility for this isn't placed on teachers and used as a stick to beat them.

[CauliflowerSqueeze]

Bobo I have worked in French schools and can see why you feel it's not an issue. Over there it isn't.

Over here it is, for the following reasons:
French teachers only mark tests, here we have to mark exercise books and notes and everything else.
French teachers have a much lower contact rate with their classes, either 18 hours a week or 15 hours if they have the agrégation. Here, a basic classroom teacher works 22 hours out of 25.
In France there is not the very high level of inspection and control. I understand teachers can request an observation if they want to go up the pay scale. Here, most teachers have at least 2 full observations a year and lots of "drop ins" going on. They aren't left alone to get on with it.
In France, if you don't have a lesson in the afternoon you can go home. Here, you have to remain in school.
In France, there seems to be a greater level of respect for education as a whole. I worked in quite a difficult school in the northern suburbs of Paris but the students were really very pleasant. Any issues of discipline weren't the teachers' to deal with - they were sent to the office to sort it. Here, there are a number of areas where education and teachers are not respected and the message from home is such. If there is a discipline issue, it's pretty much the teacher's fault and for the teacher to deal with. And there are schools which count up the number of detentions a teacher has issued and then place them on capabilities because they aren't able to manage a class without resorting to punishment.
In France, if you are ill you don't have to arrange work for your classes. Here, you have to send it in.
In France if the kids do badly in their exams it doesn't get entirely blamed on the teachers - it is assumed that the student didn't work hard enough. Here, you are responsible - your plans and interventions and approach are all picked through and critiqued if they don't make the progress they should.
In France, teachers do not have to do "duties" and here we do.

On balance, in France I do feel teachers are allowed to be professionals and have slightly more time and a system that allows them to get on with it better.
It's by no means perfect (being sent to work in a school a long way away till you have earned points is not great) but largely it's a lot better in my opinion. I had 34 kids in a class there in 1ère and it was absolutely fine.

[AtiaoftheJulii]

Any school that only lets kids with A or A s do A levels is selective.*

Yes, I'm now wondering what the B students in South Hants do if they want to do A levels? Travel?

[Bobochic]

Thank you for that post, CauliflowerSqueeze. Obviously there is more to to the functioning of a class than size alone and, as you point out, French teachers do have fewer responsibilities than their English counterparts, meaning that they aren't inundated with marking, discipline, reporting etc.

I also went to a school where some of my teachers were French, teaching according to French traditions. Others were English. I'm not at all sure I learned more from the English teachers, though the pupils all preferred the Englsh teachers as they did so much more for us.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Atia, I've pmed you :)

[Rosieposy4]

Less than 20% of my y12s have three A*s in the sciences. This is a better achieving cohort than the previous year.
It is also worth noting that a lot of the research on class sizes is based on minor increases, eg comparisons of classes rising from26 to 28 in main school.
Our typical year 12 size 5 years ago was 14-16, dropping to between 10-12 in year 13. So my classes have effectively doubled in size over that time. I am marking work today where i still cannot even put a face to the name for some of the students. I definately would have known the names of all my sixth form groups a few years ago by three weeks in.

[Str4ngedaysindeed]

My ds is at a sixth form college which is ridiculously successful and difficult to get into. He had to get A's in his science subjects to do A levels and it is a really big college with around 25 in each if his groups. When I went there in 1980 , my A level drama group had 7 of us - now I think there about 300 kids per year doing it!

[Ta1kinpeece]

I dropped DD off at Uni today
One of her second year mentors was at the same 6th form
but its so huge that neither of them recognised each other !!

[Lemonsole]

Symonds only requires students to have an A* or A at GCSE for Maths and the Sciences - because the evidence suggests that students starting A level courses with any lower will probably be wasting their time, unless, of course, they can match teaching time with tutored time, etc.

In MFL students need to have a B.
For most other courses the requirements are the basic entry requirements of five A*-C passes, including Maths and English. This is not selective.

Some courses require, e.g. a good pass in English (B) to do History, but this part is not always enforced.

Students who miss on their offer are usually offered a L2 course with resits in Maths /English, whence they can progress to L3 the following year. Students who only just meet the entry requirements are guided towards three rather than four subjects.

This is not very selective. In the sector, PSC is regarded as an open-access college.

Nowhere offering A levels will accept any student with low GCSE grades - most schools expect on average a grade, or even two grades, higher than than PSC ask for. No college would allow a 16 year old with D or E grades to start an A level course - and I don't think that any that do are doing the best thing by those students.

[Rosieposy4]

It really would not be up here Lemonsole. I agree totalky about the evidence showing that only kids with As or A*s in the sciences really succeed with science or maths A levels but none of the state schools in my county, (very large one) require that, or stick to it. We allegedly require B grades but any sob stroy and you are on the course. Other schools in the area do not even have the B grade requirement. Of course noone is talking Ds or below
Most of the private schools also do not have such requirements ( excluding the school that must not be named for fear of lawsuits but has bronze stautes of quadripeds dancing through a substance that can be obtained by UV breakdown of hydrogen peroxide) and some of them have very good success rates.
PS by any criteria is selective, and very much so for the sciences certainly. If i restricted my clases to that then my results would be superb ( based on analysis of the past five years A2 results) but the reality is that i have kids doing sciences with Cs or with a C in maths, and all the evidence tells us they will do very badly but the parents alays know better.

[Rosieposy4]

Btw i can spell but i most certainly cannot rype on an iPad 😀

[Ta1kinpeece]

Rosie
I have to say that Lemon is utterly correct in her statement that Symonds is not seen as overly selective.
Both of my children and their friends have picked their 6th form colleges based on what "felt right" rather than feeling excluded by Symonds.

If other schools and colleges are trying to get kids through A level Maths without an A grade at GCSE then they are not doing them any favours in the long run.

BP are actually stricter about the number of A*-B grades than PS and the RTC A level stream are stricter still

[Ta1kinpeece]

Getting back to class sizes - if you have kids ranging from B to A* then small groups are practically essential at A level to effectively tutor them through it.

If all of the kids in the group have A or A* (and a decent number of A^) then they peer mentor and work at speeds which are compatible with classes of 24 for A2