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Primary education

Join our Primary Education forum to discuss starting school and helping your child get the most out of it.

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Original poster

161 teachers/ta for 869 pupils is this normal?

13 replies

momtothree · 25/05/2015 22:38

OK so daily mail story about a Birmingham school, but 1:5 ratio better than a prep? And 35 volunteers (big plus) Is this normal?

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Mopmay · 25/05/2015 22:41

Sounds mad. We have 90 for 750

306235388 · 25/05/2015 22:48

That's loads.

We have 25 teaching members of staff for 500+ kids.

Mopmay · 25/05/2015 22:48

Mad in a good way... Just looked and it looks amazing. There are schools a bit like that near us - get fantastic results and DC are happy and thriving.

Original poster

momtothree · 25/05/2015 22:59

I dont doubt that its a big plus for the kids but seems excessive. 7 adults per class - how are the council affording it? I dont think many schools are this highly staffed. I have never thought about it before but it would be a good to know when selecting a school.

OP posts:

Mopmay · 25/05/2015 23:24

It may be that not all are full time. We have a lot of specialist staff that only do part time on specific things

Mopmay · 25/05/2015 23:27

Mom there will be a lot of pupil premium. I often see crys on here about DC bring lost in a class of 30 but that's not reality - most have more staff

AtomicDog · 26/05/2015 00:18

Re-read the article! It says 161 members of staff not 161 teachers and TAs. Schools usually have about the same number of support staff (administrators, lunchtime supervisors, technicians, cleaners etc) as they do teaching staff, so you can halve your ratios.
Also, some (or even many) of those staff will be PT, not FT. The only unusual aspect is the number of parent volunteers, and tbh many schools discourage parents coming in to help these days.

AtomicDog · 26/05/2015 00:24

If you look in the performance tables, they have 50 (but 44.6 FTE) teachers and 39 (29.9 FTE) TAs. (Data taken from the DfE Workforce census).

Don't read the DM and expect it to tell the full story!

AtomicDog · 26/05/2015 00:27

The ratio of pupils to teachers in that school is 17.7:1.
This information is available for all state-maintained schools- look in the performance tables for your selected school, it's right down at the bottom of the page.

And the last OFSTED inspection was 2007, so not particularly current, especially considering the issues with schooling in this authority!

BackforGood · 26/05/2015 00:33

Linky ?

(or at least tell me the name of the school )

AtomicDog · 26/05/2015 00:57

It's Greet Primary.
The DM article is here

BackforGood · 26/05/2015 17:18

Thanks for the link Atomic -
What's going on... a positive article written about a school

AtomicDog · 27/05/2015 08:56

Well, it's probably just lifted entirely from Birmingham Mail, that's how DM get their regional stories isn't it?
Would be nice to think that something being published by two newspapers could actually be fact-checked, but hey.
OP, if you look at performance tables you'll see that the ratios at greet are v similar to the other schools in the area (not that there's any spaces in any of them!).

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