Class sizes

[katedan]

How many children are there in your KS2 classes? DS's school had 22 in KS1 and this has rised to 35 in yr 3. His teacher at parents evening last night admitted thathe had worked out that he only got 12 mins individual time with each pupil PER WEEK! I am shocked by this and DS appears to already slightly behind where he was at the end of KS1. His teacher had advised we do more at home to support him but we do quite a bit already and I don't want to put him off learning by pushing him to do more work at home. Your advice or stories would help me.

Class sizes have been my biggest annoyance. My children do and did go to a "great" infant school. All classes have 31 to 33 children in. Classes are mixed (Reception/Yr 1, Yr 1/Yr 2).

I cannot see how any teacher or child can do their best with so many children vying for attention - at such wide ranging ability levels.

In my experience the shy can easily be left behind. It is also tru that the confident competitive children can flourish.

DD managed 24 in Y3, DS always had 27-31. Sizes have gone up mostly, though, due to economic times we're in.

DD yr6 25-30 per class
DD yr4 37 in her class
DS yr3 33 because his year group is bigger so has 3 classes instead of 2
DS yr1 30 mix of yr1 and yr2.

There are now 36 in my DS's class and he is certainly taking advantage of this. It takes an exceptional teacher to manage a class of this size and I have seen it managed at a previous areas outstanding school by the Headteacher with a class of 39.

Teacher says she is getting "lots of help" - this is from the "midday staff" who make spelling and grammatical mistakes in the childrens' reading record books and even misspell the childrens' names.

She has just got too many children to manage and is floundering. Correct me if I am wrong.

Most I've had to teach was 35 (class size limit only counts for KS1) - those extra five DO make the difference and the line appeared to go on forever compared to others in the playground! Not much could be done about it - just a freakishly large cohort of kids (mustn't have been much on telly that year)

I've had 36 children before, absolutely gorgeous, sassy group of children (although some future teachers didn't agree), we had a good relationship so good progress was made. These chn were such social butterflies so working with different children in the class on regular basis really suited them.

If the children want to work for their teacher, the relationship is there and teacher is capable it shouldn't be a problem. In older generations the classes were 40+ and with no TA so it can't be impossible.

In an ideal world classes would be small but as emptyshell says, if there wasn't much on the telly...!