45 pupils with one teacher in Reception - can this be legal?

[Athie]

My daughter attends Reception at a school with one and a half class intake (45 pupils). The school decided to keep 15 Year One pupils back to make two classes of 30 pupils taught by 2 teachers in a shared space.
We have just discovered that the teachers take it in turns to take the 15 Year One pupils out of the class every morning for booster classes. This means 45 Reception children are left with one teacher every morning. The head argues that because there are also TAs present this is not a problem.
We're so concerned we're considering moving schools. Advice/ insight much appreciated.
BTW - the school in question is an Academy.

No the legal ratio for reception is one teacher per every 30 children. Having a TA in the room doesn’t change that ratio. For 45 pupils there should be two qualified teachers minimum.

“It's like this in state schools and pretty much accepted now, with so many cuts” no it isn’t. Legally they can work without TAs but the teacher pupil ratio is set in law.

“HLTAs can cover for PPA, but I'm not sure they do count as a school teacher in the ratios” they don’t!

The wording of the Infant class size compliance says
“no infant class ….shall contain more than 30 pupils while an ordinary teaching session is conducted by a single school teacher”. “
**
“Myth – If a class goes over 30, we can meet the class size duty by putting another adult in to support the teacher.

Not necessarily. They must be a ‘school teacher’ as set out in Annex A.

“School teachers’ do not include teaching assistants, higher level teaching assistants or other support staff. However, support staff may carry out ‘specified work’, such as delivering lessons to pupils, within infant classes in certain circumstances. In each case:

3.In practice this means that, although a school with infant classes must have sufficient school teachers to be able to teach its infants in groups of 30 or fewer per teacher, support staff, providing they meet the above criteria, may ‘teach’ infant groups when teachers are not available (e.g. when a teacher is away from their class on their Planning, Preparation and Assessment time).

4.Support staff must not be the main ‘teacher’ for an infant group and, where support staff are undertaking the more demanding aspects of “specified work” – particularly where they are working with whole classes – head teachers should have regard to the higher level teaching assistant (HLTA) standards in determining whether those staff have the necessary level of skills and expertise.

5.If a school were to use support staff instead of teachers to lead its infant groups, either as a permanent arrangement or for the majority of the school week on a regular basis, it would be in default of its class size duty.
Consequently, a school must employ sufficient teachers to enable it to teach its infant classes in groups of no more than 30 per school teacher.

I've seen it argued on here when I've questioned it before that hltas are considered qualified now. Certainly there's local job adverts I've seen which are entirely teaching whole classss afternoons as a hlta. I imagine if the 45 were left with an hlta and a teacher that would be considered okay (doesn't say if it's an hlta.)

HLTAs can deliver lessons and they can become qualified teachers but they are not qualified teachers (although that is less relevant with academies as they aren't required to use teachers with QTS). As per Norestformrz's posts, they are definitely not teachers for the purposes of infant class size legislation.

An HLTA teaching a class of 30 occasionally when the teacher is not available is ok. A teacher and an HLTA taking a class of 45 is not.

The head could resolve the situation by helping to teach the class of 45 or by not taking the Y1s out to be taught separately. As things stand, the head either doesn't understand infant class size legislation or is wilfully ignoring it.

but even in an academy an HLTA who is being used as an unqualified teacher ought to be paid as one.

If they are being paid as an HLTA, then they don't count as a teacher.

The arrangement of classes is making me think wilfully ignoring it. The R/Yr 1 mix is IME unusual in a 1.5 form intake but could possibly lead to employing 1 fewer teacher.

To confirm what PRH has said is correct. It is totally legal to mix 45 reception children with 15 year 1 children and have two school teachers in the classroom setting of 60. However as soon as the class is split 45 and 15 into discreet classes then the class with 45 becomes illegal under the infant class size regs, no matter the number of TAs or the capability level of the TAs.
However the infant class size regs were introduced well before the current philosophy in foundation stage of organised learning by play. If you look around at the various activities that a well organised and effective foundation stage is, it makes a large amount of sense to have a school teacher with a number of committed TAs working as a team around the activities. The school teacher is planning, organising and leading the learning with the TAs of whatever level making a telling contribution to the learning of the pupils.
This is where the head teacher is making a decision based on sensible foundation stage practice but either ignoring or not being properly aware of the infant class size regs. Given that the class organisation is not what is most normal for a 45 PAN school of two small reception classes and then 3 classes across year 1 and 2, one does have to conclude that there has been a conscious decision to save a teacher's salary.
Saving a teacher's salary is however where I would question the overall savings this is making. If you are employing an extra TA, then the cost difference to an NQT or teacher in their first couple of years of teaching is no more than £15K. If you then add in the more difficult to calculate factor of the advantage of having 2 school teachers across the 45 reception pupils leading to potential improved progress of all pupils, I question whether the school is considering the longer term, across the whole school impact.
In terms of HLTAs they are allowed to take a whole class using planning from a school teacher and providing in the head teacher's opinion they are capable of doing the job. That is clearly not a long term commitment but in schools I am involved with, the HLTAs provide a very successful short term answer for teacher sickness etc. I would far prefer to see an HLTA with good knowledge of the pupils, who the pupils respond to and who can lead some teaching than a supply school teacher who is clearly going to struggle to know the children in the very short space of time they will be in the school.

Ours is every Wednesday ppa for head of year. And was similar last year. Year 2/3/4 though if that makes a difference.

The hlta job was teaching on rotation every afternoon (so year 3 Monday, etc).

I agree with you about the short term supply, admission. Not so sure about the foundation stage thing though.

Good quality foundation stage practice has a balance of learning through play and adult initiated activities, which will usually include some whole class teaching even if only for a short period of time. I don't know many reception classes where there aren't at least some whole class carpet sessions led by the teacher.

Even if it was all organised learning through play, that involves a heavy workload for the teacher responsible for knowing all 45 children well enough in all areas of development to be able to provide the appropriate environment and activities. I don't think it's possible to be able to run that effectively with that ratio of teachers to children.

Sorry Rafals I was making generalised comments on foundation stage and I had assumed that there would be some whole school teaching / carpet work involved. I have no issues with what you are saying.

So how can the YR in my school have 63 children with 2 teachers? 31 in one class and 32 in another.

I am not clued up on the law regarding class sizes but if 45 children exceeded the 30 as set in law, how is it okay to have 31 and 32?

Fair enough, admission.

Presumably they got in on appeal and are excepted children, banging. There are a few very limited circumstances where that can happen.

Just to back up RafaIsTheKingOfClay, there are a number of situations where a child is excepted which means they don't count towards the infant class size limit. The most common is when a child is admitted on appeal (which almost invariably means a mistake was made in the admissions process and places were offered to the wrong people) but there are a number of other reasons a child can be excepted.

We always have those 'limited circumstances' in that every year our Reception intake exceeds 60. This year has been the worst. It has usually been 61 or 62. Far gone are the days when we struggled with 34 pupils in the entire year group!

This is the exact situation in our school. You're not in West Yorkshire are you?

I have friends with reception kids and year one kids in the reception classroom. The school have told the reception parents that the teacher takes the 15 year ones out for 'short booster sessions', whereas the year-one-in-reception-classroom parents have been told the year ones spend all morning in their own classroom with a teacher.

Sounds completely illegal and horrendous for kids and teachers/ TAs alike.