Has anyone successfully gotten their school to add an extra year group to stop overcrowding in classrooms?

[chickpea4]

Found out my child's class will have 40 students from January. I'm sure the new family and the student are lovely, but the class only has 1 full time teacher and one part time assistant. As we move into Year 5 and Year 6 which is are formative years, we'd like to petition for the school to split into 2 smaller 20 student classes.

Has anyone successfully done this? About 10 years ago our school did have two year groups and split year groups for younger years, but being based in central London many families chose to leave during the lockdowns and Covid and enrolment declined. However, now with the private school VAT and more families choosing not to send their children to private school in Y3 we are seeing many classes with 40+ students in each class (Y3 and up).

I'd love to hear how you positioned this request to the school, and better yet if it was part of an academy!

Your area must have had a hugely disproportionate number of privately educated primary school pupils if pupils shifting from private to state schooling is the sole significant factor in such grossly inflated class sizes!

Gosh!
I teach abroad on the continent and where I live you generally can’t have more than 30 kids per class. If there are children with diagnosed disabilities present the class should technically be no more than 20!! While there is some slight leeway here when new pupils enter the school it is generally only a couple of children so around 22 max.
We as a country have the opposite proportion of schools closing due to lack of children though.

I think you need to know what the PAN is (how many children can be admitted each year). This has to be published and is not some ‘made -up’ number.
If there are about 40 in each year group, it sounds as though the PAN maybe 45. In which case you would expect to have mixed-age classes. Also admissions would expect the school to fill each year group to 45.

If the PAN is 45, I would imagine 11 classes - 2 YR, 3Y1/2, 3Y3/4 and 3Y5/6.