Is this even legal - 38 kids in a class ?

[Nclemonbaby]

My child just started at a new school and the grade above her (year 3) has 38 kids per class (our grade has 30). I thought the maximum was 30?

The LA won’t fund another classroom btw!

There is currently a bulge year going through our local Secondary schools. It’s a nightmare for schools with pupil numbers being erratic in different years

Yes I understand mixed year classes but having 3 years in one and crossing the key stages is terrible

@purplebeansprouts as I said they might not have a choice. A whole KS2 class has 4 year groups in it, and they are very common round here

Nope, it was Labour who introduced it.

There is no 30 limit from year 3 upwards sorry.
The school may have agreed to raise their limit with funding to assist the LA.
They may have accepted appeals or EHCPs as additional.

There's certainly no cap at 30. I routinely have 31 or 32 in one or two of my secondary classes each year. And that's in a really good school with no recruitment problems.

Yeah I still think it's terrible though

There was a post on this a while back and I thought I'd check an old school photo, from 1969. There were 35 children in my class even then, but with only the one teacher. No learning support assistants or other staff ever in the classroom, but there were more specialist schools then and this continued to the mid 90s, some of which really benefitted students who needed the additional support (I worked in school support), alongside schools being smaller intakes. The issue is that schools are failing too many students now, trying to work to the one size fits all model and it doesn't. I have a neice training to become a teacher and she says they have to work to the pace of the slowest, which is really hitting those in the middle and top and that's in an affluent area of Surrey!

Bloody hell, it's starting to look like Turkey here, visited this interesting country 30 years ago and the classes at schools were similar.

My old school report from 1971 tells me we had 41 kids in our primary class. It didn’t seem that many but classes were ruled with iron rods in those days.

We already have the least happy children in Europe. Cramming kids on top of each other isn't going to help that..

@Jsogs schools don’t do it for fun

@YYURYYUCICYYUR4ME What your DN said really is not accurate. Otherwise how would the brightest ever succeed? When I was a school governor, dc we’re in a TA group if struggling. Often to boost basic learning so the curriculum could be accessed. Other dc were taught a topic with questions asked etc. Then dc chose questions from a menu, with guidance. So hard, harder and hardest. The teacher would set extension questions for the brightest. Later on sets were used. Lots of boosting for the ones who needed it. So there’s no way a decent school just teaches to the lower achievers. How would the other dc exceed? How would the dc make progress? The lower achievers often make the least progress so no teacher would want that for the bright dc. So maybe have another chat?

I also think 32 in a class isn’t too bad. 38 is too many. Also LAs do not enforce a dc coming to a school if others have vacancies. That’s clearly not acting appropriately in use of resources. Many schools cannot finance 21 in a class either. School budgets aren’t designed for such low numbers so small class sizes aren’t sustainable.

If this is true, then why a nearby school shows 0 vacancies for an in-year transfer? I thought the reason is they reached a limit if 30.

Whilst there is no legal limit on class sizes after KS1, that doesn't mean schools have to keep admitting children. Some schools will admit a few more in KS2, most will still try to stick to PAN.

We had 40

How are you “average”? The average income
in our country is £35,000 a year. In a two people household that is £70,000. The average private school fees according to the IFS 2022-2023 were £15,000 per year. No amount of scraping and saving would make that achievable for 11 years for the average household, especially if you have more than one child.

As explained by a pp, schools set a Pupil Admission Number which is generally decided by the size of the classrooms. It can easily be overturned though either at the head or LA's discretion and that PAN could be as high as the school wanted it to be - there is no legal limit on a KS2 class size.

@prh47bridge @Frontedadverbials thank you

If by SEND TAs you mean TAs who work with specific children, they essentially don't 'count'. The child will have an EHCP with funding which states what intervention/support that child needs and it will fill whatever hours that TA is there for. Yes at times they might also help other children nearby with maths or whatever but they can't be counted on if, say, they're with a child who needs regular time out of the classroom because child and TA might disappear at any point so you can't plan for a specific group of children to do group work with the TA. Those TAs are also supporting children who simply wouldn't have been in mainstream 20+ years ago so when people compare the current day to classes in the 70s, teachers aren't gaining anything by having an SEND TA there because they are supporting a child who wouldn't have been in a 70s classroom at all.

Regarding general TAs, some schools are just better funded than others (you can look at county funding per pupil to see the disparity), some schools have high pp/LAC funding, some have scarcity funding and some benefit from full classes of 30 as opposed to lots of classes slightly under PAN. A young teacher workforce is also considerably cheaper than an experienced workforce and could easily fund a couple of additional TAs. It's also not unusual to prioritise TAs in infants with very few up the school.

Edited to add: I see your child's school has 45% pupil premium. This will make a big difference to its funding.

@MyOtherCarisAVauxhallZafira are there TAs in KS2 classes. Some schools have prioritised TAs in KS1 when there is limited funds

I don't know about KS2 to be honest DS is my only.

The SEN TAs don't seem to be linked to individual children , although they do support those who need extra help with phonics etc, the children with more complex additional needs are in a separate unit with two classes (starlight and rainbow). There are a couple who join DS' 'house' for things like sports day and there's a boy who comes in for maths lessons then goes back to starlight.
I do wonder if it's essentially economy of scale, 120 DC per year group, almost half with PP. Two years above DS it was five form entry so 150 DC per year.

You don't know our finances.
With 1 child + living in an area with low house prices it is doable. Just. With lots of saving + scrimping. Which is why we can't afford VAT.
Don't let your prejuduce blind you

@MyOtherCarisAVauxhallZafira When I was a governor of a junior school (y3-6) we could afford TAs. The majority were not paid for by a EHCP but we had some pp funding and some teachers were younger. We had a healthy mix of staff experience. Most help was aimed at helping dc with SEN for whom we didn’t get funding! Most pp dc did need targeted help. Nowhere near 40.% though. That’s a huge increase in budget over a school with, say, 10% fsm/pp.