Looking at private schools - what's the minimum you would want in a year group??

[spongeyspoon]

This will help us decide.

There's a school that have 17 to a year group and a school that has 35.

Thank you.

Do the numbers change throughout the school? E.g. At our school there is 1 reception class of 12, but by the time you get up to years 3-6, there are 2 or three classes and between 25-40 children in a year.

sounds remarkably like our local girls schools. Town school with tiny intake at primary (but goes all the way through to 18) and country school twice the size (and increasing upwards) but finishes at 11. There's frequent crossover between the two as parents realise the impact on their child. The small school loses the ones who are great at sport and don't get real competition (conversely, those who leave the big one get the chance to represent the small school in various sports however average they are) etc etc. Children who have trouble with a difficult kid at the small school go to the big one and are happy (nowhere to hide when there are 10 in the entire year) and children who experience bullying in the big school go to the small one to be nurtured and have their confidence rebuilt. There are siblings split between the two in some cases.
Focus on the ethos of the school rather than necessarily just the size.

Purple-that sounds ideal! Smaller numbers when they're younger then growing!

Yes, it works really well (although it's not deliberate, just the way it is!). We get influxes at year 3 and year 5 usually.
Having said that, even with a reasonable number in the year, one year has a huge shortage of girls (only 4) which affects the sports etc. And it's one of those things which puts prospective parents of girls for that year off, so I don't know how it will get better.
Having been a parent of a girl in a low intake school (state, but intake was 15), and gone through the problems with friendships that caused, I'd pick bigger over smaller now.

My DS is in Reception in an unusually small year group for the school (there are 19 of them in 2 classes). As all the other year groups are bigger, I hope they might get a bigger intake into the Prep at least, but honestly, while I like his small class size in terms of the attention he gets, it's a bit small for a whole year group socially. If all other things are equal, I'd probably go for the bigger school, particularly as the class size is about the same.

What age does the school go up to?

If it goes right through seniors too with such a small cohort then they will not be able to put out sports teams if that has any bearing on your decision.

What is the size of the year group? If there is only 17 in the whole year then that's very small.

My DC were in a year group of about 24. I wouldn't have wanted it any smaller.

We decided on a prep school (we moved DS for year7 & 8), that had 17 per year group. We loved the family feel of the school & DS was extremely lucky that the year group all got on so brilliantly. The year above were a disaster & there was no scope for the school to move pupils about as with a larger school. This school expanded to a two class intake the following year & we knew finances were good because it had recently been purchased by a local public school as a feeder school. Lots of money was being spent on it & that was also a deciding feature as to why we selected it.

The other school option & 2-3 classes per year. It was a highly selective prep which fed to another public school, but we didn't feel it was the right fit for DS. As I said, he was very lucky with our choice. His one class per year group was one of the nicest year groups the school had ever had.

speaking as somebody who went to small private (15 / year in primary ... 40 year in Secondary)
and sent my kids to state (30 / year primary, 300 / year secondary, 2000/ year 6th)
bigger is most definitely better in both sectors

17 is absolutely fine. A question to ask is what happens with classes of more children join mid year. At what point to the split or create a waiting list?

I think prep schools with very small year groups tend to be the cheaper ones. That is a key factor why people pick them over the larger, more expensive ones.

Assuming that the larger prep schools with 2 or more class intakes also have class sizes under 20, what benefit of a small year group of less than 20 in a co-ed school for a child at the top of the school, whether that is Year 5 and 6 or 7 and 8 (and most of those tiny Preps finish at 11 - few small ones go all the way to 13 and prepare pupils for entry to public schools which start at 13 usually) is there?

Unless your child has special needs of some description, I honestly cannot see what benefits a tiny school can deliver that a much larger one which still teaches it's bigger year groups in small classes cannot deliver, in terms of curriculum, facilities, extra curricular, quantity and breadth of staff, friendship options, preparation for a range of secondaries etc. However, I can see loads of things a very small school cannot deliver in all of these areas.

Yes a small year group with one small class delivers a small class teaching environment. However, this is only one aspect of education. People pay for having specialist teachers for all subjects - does a tiny prep provide a different, specialist teacher for each of Maths, History, Geography, French, Latin, RS, English, Drama, Music, Games, Swimming, Art etc etc......I doubt it, because they simply won't have enough teachers on the staff to allow for this. People also pay for extra curricular range and facilities - will the tiny prep be able to field teams for weekly matches and tournaments against other schools in a range of winter and summer sports? Will they be able to provide specialist coaching, holiday coaching courses and quality facilities? Will they be able to get out a couple of orchestras - one for younger kids and one for the older ones, a couple of choirs, ensembles for strings, woodwind etc? Will they be able to group students into large enough groups of the same ability to ensure effective differentiation, but also a decent number of kids at the same level to bounce off and provide a teacher for each group, not just one teacher who rotates round tables? Will they be able to diffuse friendship issues if needed by missing classes up and cope with two or three of the same gender leaving the year, without it wrecking the gender balance?

It just seems to me that many of the tiny prep schools are not worth paying for. The limitations that tiny imposes or the risks at least are significant.....to the point that unless a child is going there because of SEN or social difficulties, I cannot really see what is being gained by paying, unless people take the view that simply by paying, the school must be better, which is a bit daft. Perhaps I'm missing something crucial.