Does anyone have a positive experience of class predominantly made up of one sex

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DD2 is due to start school in September. She will go to DD1's very good school. However, the school has one form only and her class looks like it will be overwhelmingly dominated by other siblings the vast majority boys.

Does anyone have any experiences of this? DD2 is pretty resilient but I am quite worried that this might not be the best situation. There is another option of a less good school she could go to that wouldn't impact on drop off times. Would you consider this?

Yes my DS is in Yr 1, small school, they have 9 boys and 4 girls in his year. All absolutely fine.

Depends exactly how many boys/ girls there are. If there are , say, 5 girls , that might be fine. My friends DD was in a secondary school group when there was only one other girl that she didn’t get on with, my friend changed her DDs school.

DD is in single form entry school. 25 in her class and only 6 are girls. The benefits are that she gets picked for things more often (eg sports events where they need a minimum number of girls on the team) and has more friends in other years than my other children had. I’m sure you can imagine the downsides- something I didn’t consider is that girls who join, leave quickly because it is hard to penetrate the tight groups. DD has been quite upset when her new friends leave, as she is on the edge of a “three”, but that could happen anywhere I suppose. We do promote friends outside of school and girl-filled activities outside of school. So it works for us on balance.

Thanks for your responses. They are reassuring.

So far I've identified at least four girls including mine who will be in the class of 30 but I'm sure there will be more that I am not aware of.

We had a really bad experience of this. There were 5 girls, they didn’t all get on and it became awful, falling out, being left out, it just didn’t work. All of us complained and finally in their last year theirs & the other class were mixed.

DD’s current class is 21 girls and 9 boys. It seems to be fine at the moment but she’s only in reception so who knows!

The issue can be friendships.

My dd has been in a girl dominated secondary class for the last 2 years because they are put into classes according to the subject blocks they've chosen, and she chose the modern foreign language stream which is female dominated. This has been all good for her, but a bit tricky for some of the 4 boys in the class with 20 girls! Essentially one of them has no problems because he just gets on and is close friends with 3 girls in the class. He has two brothers so perhaps he has enough male company at home! Two of the others have palled up and are inseparable but it means the 4th is a bit on the edges of things - though he's not excluded he has no close friends in the class.

My dc3 is one of 6 boys in a primary school class with 19 girls and this is a minor problem, but mainly because 3 of the 6 boys are quite... Erm... Difficult characters. It reduces the pool of options and the opportunity to "just stay away from X and y and play with someone else". I've told him repeatedly that it's normal for girls and boys to play together, after all he loves playing with his sister, but the dominant difficult characters in the class police their sex segregated play with snide comments and sneering/ teasing which is too low level to be rooted out yet quite insidious. He plays with girls in some contexts (especially indoors this is somehow easier) and with a boy in the next school year who is a good neighbor friend sometimes, but the tendency to segregate by year group and sex is strong, the two quiet boys in the class are besties and stick together, and he often ends up playing with the 3 difficult character boys in his class, who generally "need" more players for their games, and drama ensues...

It can be a problem tbh. It isn't always. It's luck if the draw regarding the personalities involved.

Interesting. I will keep an eye on it. There is no other class to mix up with as it is one form entry. I may be worrying unnecessarily but thank very much for your input.

Going back quite a long time here, but when I was in juniors my class had 22 boys and 8 girls. I was never particularly girly, so I loved it!

DS1's class has 15 boys, 4 girls.

They are rowdy. I'm much happier with their current teacher than the ones they have had the last 3 years who seemed to do a lot of ineffectual shouting. His current teacher is excellent and on the ball and looks for the positives in every child.

DS is friends with 3 out of the 4 girls in the class (I feel a bit sorry for the one other girl - but assume she has other friends at school, they mix up the classes a lot regardless of age.)

In a very small school, 9 boys and 4 girls in y1 might not be an issue, but by y5 it could be. Girls, especially, fall out! Lack of friendship options can make a child very lonely if they are left out.

I think 5 out of 30 is also a problem. Again what if your child is an outlier of this group? In YR children may well play with either sex, but by about Y3 they tend to separate. What if they want a broader circle of school friends? Having girl activities outside school doesn’t help with lonely lunch breaks.

I’m not sure what I would do. I think try it and see. However my DDs would not have liked this so be led by your DD.

In reception:
Dd1's class was 21 boys 9 girls. It was a lovely class.
Dd2's class was19 girls, 11 boys. It was a difficult class.

Ive experience of a very similar scenario in DDs first Primary school. 7 girls & the rest boys in a single form year. Fine in reception, yr 1&2, but after that, a bloody nightmare. Really bad dynamics & nowhere to go when the social bullying starts.

If you have a choice, I would avoid

DGS is in year 1, single form entry 22 boys and 8 girls. Last year in Reception there were 5 tables of 6 dc. One table had 4 girls, another had 2 girls and the other 2 were put on separate tables, which seemed a bit odd to me. Same has happened this year, except there are 4 tables ( 2 with 8 and 2 with 7 dc) 5 girls are on one table, 2 on another and 1 on her own amongst the boys.
i think if i had a dd in that class I would be a little concerned if my dd was the only girl on a table, especially as she got older.

Both my DC were in the minority sex in their classes at primary school

DD's year were majority boys and DS's year was majority girls

I don't recall it causing any problems for either of them

Dd had 12 girls and 22 boys in her year 6 class and it was a nightmare by the end. The boys were loud and disruptive, 4 girls were Muslim and mainly played with each other so that only left 8 girls and they all fell out with each other at some point or another.
Ds1 has 15 girls and 21 boys in his class so it’s heading the same way but we’re obviously on the other side being in the majority. His class is much calmer though and the boys don’t really fall out in the way girls do. DS doesn’t play with any of the girls at all.

Sorry, i posted to soon. I meant to add that Dgs plays with both boys and girls, even though he is on the table with just one girl. He has been to birthday parties and the girls are invited to a boy's party and vice versa.

Yes one of my ds at a small village primary, class of eleven boys, they were joined in yr 5 by a girl, they are all in their late thirties now and still in touch/very close.

DD's primary had ~7 boys and 22 girls throughout her time there.
It was fine because she was in the majority group, but a few boys came and left as there wasn't enough choice of friendship of same sex.

I would think very hard about being only one of a few girls in a class. Might depend on how well the school handles it though. e.g. They could do more activities joint with the year above.

There are 7 boys in my son’s class. Unfortunately five of them have formed clique leaving just one boy for him to play with.

I'm glad I didn't have this issue. I wouldn't like such a small class. Lack of choice for friendships.
I have seen the nastiness between girls, in ds2's year and it's not nice!!

Unfortunately Ds2 is a bulge year, so instead of 2 x classes of 30, which ds1 had, Ds2 has 3 classes, 90 children. Not ideal.