Year 2 Class Size

[ClassSize]

DS's class was 27 at the beginning of the school year. Since then a further 4 pupils have joined, with another starting after half term - taking the class to 32 with one teacher and one TA.

The school have no choice but to take more children as the PAN (? think that is right) is 38. So the 2 extra are jsut regular admissions, not excepted children (again think that is right phrase)

It is a small village school that due to the PAN often has split classes/mixed year groups. But there are not enough classrooms to split DS's class - all the classes are taken with other year groups.

I guess an additional 2 children will not provide the budget for an extra teacher? But should the school be doing this anyway? Is the law still that no KS1 class should be bigger than 30?

That would still be breaking the law. A class may not contain more than 30 pupils for any ordinary teaching session with a single teacher.

I think that tiggytape makes a good point about this case around a change that is timed to suit the school is better than one hastily forced on the school. It is year 2 and it is February. If the school has to do anything it is the employment of another teacher for one and a half terms because come August they will be year 3 and the 30 maximum on pupils with one school teacher disappears. My suspicion would be that the school has been told that they should not do it, slap on hand, don't do it again and that is all the LA will do as it is only a matter of a few months. The harshest action is likely to have employ an extra teacher in the classroom for the summer term.

Of course the head stills has the issue of teaching groups for September and if other year groups in the infant end of the school are also getting to 30+ then some re-organisation will be necessary.

I am guessing Ofsted would take a very dim view should they decide to do their inspection whilst the class is too big too?

Oh, x-posts. Yes come Sept will become a non-issue as class will become mixed, probably Y3/Y4. It is only until July.

If a child is an excepted child do they stay as this as they move through infants?
Sorry for the hijack op. 2 children admitted to my child's reception class due to admissions error leading to a Class size of about 26 mixed r/y1.
Pan increased from 18 to 20 for the following admissions year and several new pupils have appeared in all 3 infant years, now 2 mixed yr infant classes of 31 and 32. The newer children are not excepted children. Is this allowed?
Still very happy with the teaching but the school is bursting at the seams!

Yes, an excepted child remains excepted throughout their time in infants. However it is not clear that the 2 children admitted to your child's Reception class are excepted as they did not cause the class to go oversize and at that stage, with the PAN still at 18, there was no future prejudice to consider. And even if they were still excepted, the school is still required to reject any further applications for places until the class size drops back below 30, at which point the pupils cease to be excepted.

I am therefore struggling to understand how they can have admitted so many new pupils that they have gone past the class size limit without any of the pupils being excepted. Once any year had reached 20 pupils any further applications should have been rejected. If they were then admitted on appeal they would be excepted (any children admitted on appeal in an ICS case are automatically excepted) but there is no way they should have been admitted without an appeal.

Thank you all so much for your help. Our school have talked to admissions and the extra 2 are now classed as excepted pupils. No more will be going into the class. Extra support given. Parents on the whole happy - and certainly prefer the status quo to the disruption of mid-year class splits.

As I have said in other posts the LA and school have come up with a cunning but sensible plan - whether it is strictly legal is another question.

Timing a bit back-to-front but falls under this one: www.education.gov.uk/consultations/downloadableDocs/6757-SchoolAdmissionsCode.pdf
Page 46 of this states:
3.79 The class size legislation makes allowance for the entry of an additional child in very limited circumstances where not to admit the child would be prejudicial to his or her interests (“excepted pupils”). However, every effort must be made to keep over large classes to a minimum. These circumstances are where:
a) a child moves into an area outside the normal admissions round and no other school would provide suitable education within a reasonable distance of their home. Before admitting children under this exception, governing bodies must consult their local authority who are in a position to advise whether these conditions apply;

I would be questioning why the head teacher set up the classes such that this situation could occur in the first place.

Surely if the pan is 38 and there are only say 90 children in infants, she should set up the classes as
yR 22
mix YR/y1 8+15
mix y1/y2 15+8
y2 22

Then she has flexibility to take up to PAN without going over class size?

Sounds great in practice. But that would work with the room set up, with the open plan nursery YR space and odd sized rooms (old school building with hotch-potch extensions.

And we did not need to question the head - she is her own worst critic!

The PAN of 38 is totally and utterly her biggest headache. She admits she made a mis-judgement in not planning for so many to join Y1. But to be fair to her there has been a 25% increase from in-year admissions for this year-group 7 new Y2s join in 6 months. (2 pupils moved away). The lawful class size of 30 has never needed to hit her radar before. Before the PAN was raised it was 30 - so that automatically limited it iyswim. Once it was raised to 38 classes have either always been small enough in infants to be below 30 or a bumper year from reception to instigate split classes from the off.

Situation resolved. Y2 will be mixed next year I am sure so not 32 for ever.

Classize, I am not sure whether the above info has come from the school, the LA or something you have found on line. In many ways I hope it is you as this is a consultation document for the 2006 regs. There have been at least another two since then, the latest is the School Admissions Code from December 2014. If it is the school or LA I am really worried that they are using such outdated information.
What you have said in the above post is still essentially correct, though phrased quite differently in paragraph 2.15e. There has also been recent comment from the Local Government Ombudsman on the law around this very point of pupils moving into the area with no available schools within reasonable distance. It is complicated and I am not even going to try and explain it, as it is not relevant to these posts.

Heads being their own worst critic - yes I think that applies to lots of heads and actually one of the reasons why as governors there should be equal weight of "critical friend" challenging questions and of supportive comments.

Oh that is mine and possibly out of date - I may have misquoted/copied from the old one. The Admissions/Head had just said something similar so just grabbed the wrong bit. Am a bit tired - can you tell . Was something I mentioned to head in vague discussions - but with the caveat that am not an educational expert - just a parent.

I am just glad it has been sorted - maybe not to the entire spirit of the law - but certainly pragmatic and made the best of the situation. The parents seem happy, the children are not going to be disrupted and it is only short term. And the head can "park" this tile Sept and not have the worry of someone complaining to the LEA. She really does have the children at the heart of her decisions and her focus and is hugely respected at the school. A slip up yes. But when challenged she has dealt with it.

And yes, feel like have done the proper role of Governor in all this - supportive (I hope) but also when right tackling actually just asking the question again. Which thanks to this thread I have also had some information - and food for thought - to enable me to do so.

And I will be honest, I did find it tricky finding stuff out - it was pure chance I found that clause/para - and think it was about 9pm last night so bar seeing it was a .gov.uk source I didn't check much more out - just pinged to Head/Chair and handed to them to deal with. Which they did.

A PAN of 38 must have been agreed by the school. These numbers are not usually imposed from above unless there is a dire shortage of school places in your area. Also, the school is getting extra money for having more children so it needs to sort its teaching out. It is the cost of running two ludicrously small year 6 classes that is stopping any teacher recruitment. They have enough teachers, they are just poorly deployed.

A PAN of 38 is inevitably difficult to manage. There will not be enough money to fund 2 classes per year so some sort of split arrangement has to happen. This is done more successfully with a PAN of 45. However, I suspect the school might not have enough classroom space for this. I would speak to a Parent a Governor urgently. Also, if they are not up to PAN in any year group, why was it increased? It does not make much sense.

38 is a difficult number but is becoming more common. The PAN of 38 is derived from the net capacity assessment, which is probably in this school 270, based on there being 9 classrooms (270 divided by 7 = 38.5).

In the past it has been convenient to have a PAN of 30 - meaning 7 classes of 30 but the two extra rooms would be used for small group work, extra reception space etc or small yr 6 classes as in this case. Now with the squeeze on pupil numbers, LAs are insisting that the teaching spaces are all used as classrooms, hence the rather more silly PAN of 38. As soon as entry is above 30 it causes problems which will always be worse with any in-year applciations.

What would be far more sensible for the school and the teaching in it, is to have an extra 2 classrooms bringing the total to 11. That would give a PAN of 45 and have a logical pattern of classes of 2 small reception classes, 3 classes of 30 across years 1 and 2, 3 classes across years 3/4 and 3 classes across years 5/6. But as funding is also tight for new classrooms, I suspect the school will just have to carry on struggling to balance out the school numbers to remain within the legal infant class limits. I do not envy the head's near impossible problem on this.

Yes the PAN of 38 was agreed some years back as the only way to get some desperately needed building funding out of the LEA (or something). All before my time. Just because is was agreed does not mean it is not a headache . And yep - no room for increase to 45 - again unless more classrooms provided - though no space on site to do so.

Anyway, situation resolved for now. Head will be aware that a 25% in-year increase in 6 months can happen. Albeit probably rarely!!