My daughter will be the only girl in her school year

[Ilovemysoil]

My 4 yr old daughter is starting primary school in September - we are really happy with the school but for one problem. The school year is small, only 8 in the class. My daughter will be the only girl. I'm not sure how I feel about this and my husband isn't either. Whilst she is an outgoing child and has a few boy friends at nursery, I'm more worried about as she gets older as girls and boys naturally develop different interests.

We've spoken to the headteacher and she was reassuring and gave a few options as to how to ensure she doesn't feel left out - but it is nagging at me. Even if there was only one other girl I would feel much better.

My questions is - what would others do? Would you consider another school?

I wouldn't be comfortable with the dynamic of such a boy heavy class to be honest. I think she'll find it hard.

My dd was in a small class of 15 a few years ago. There were 12 boys and 3 girls. It was a challenge as she didn't gell with any of the othe girl's . She was happy at school and the teacher was a mazing but like yours it was an odd small school year with classes of 20 to 25 either side. She did miss out , and in retrospect we should have moved her.. we did lots of dance which helped but it took her till 6th form to find her friends. The secondary was filled with kids from local primary's who all had the village groups and stuck with them.. I'd watch and wait.

With only 8 in the year there will be mixed classes. My DS was only one of 6 in his year and they put 3 years together.

Won’t she be in a mixed age class with numbers that size though? I teach mixed age and had as low as 3 in reception. They’re always fine becuse there are girls on the other years!

No where near as well as a school of 50 kids. In bigger schools, the teachers often aren’t even in the playground at break times; lunch time supervisors are. In small school they don’t have the finances for a lunch time supervisor; the teachers working in the classrooms all day are also watching the children while they play in the playground.

In my experience, being in a very small school is very different to an average sized school in terms of teachers knowing the pupils, pupils knowing one another etc.

editing to say: I don’t even know if the head teacher knows my youngest child’s name in his school 😅.

I would probably advise that she would be ok if it was an infant school where she is leaving at the end of y2. If it is a primary that she will be in until y6 then I would be very cautious. By y6 she ideally will want to have a proper friendship group she is moving into senior school with

Boys do ballet too. The b/g divide is caused by parental/peer pressure, social attitudes, differences in the way people treat boys/girls, expectations etc.

Just treat them as children.

Mother of one DD, now grown up. I wouldn't have worried about this because I would have been so happy about the small class size.

My DD was in a majority boy class throughout primary. Some were very 'challenging' - one escaped from school by scaling a big fence, his twin seized a pair of scissors and stormed around the classroom with them, another threatened to get her thrown off the school council. She took all of this in her stride. At the same time, she was friendly with two gentle boys, one a big fan of trains, the other in the habit of wearing make-up at home on a Friday evening. Not all boys are the same (of course!) and I think it unlikely that your DD wouldn't find friends among seven of them.

If you thought she was missing out on the company of girls, are ballet, Rainbows and church/religious groups things she might be interested in?

Edited for typo

I've worked in both. Staff who care know the children equally as well in both.

Hardly any schools can afford lunchtime supervisors these days. Lunchtime duties are usually covered by TAs, who know the children just as well as the teachers and can communicate issues effectively to the teacher if needs be. Even back in the day of lunchtime supervisors, many would get to know the children amazingly well.

Having worked in both types of settings, the "teachers know the kids better" argument some people use as a plus for small schools annoys me. It sounds good, but it's a very sweeping and generalised opinion. A school which knows the children well is a school which priorities relationships. It's got nothing to do with size. If your child's headteacher doesn't even know their name, that's a poor headteacher who hasn't prioritised relationships 🤷🏻‍♀️ They sadly exist in smaller schools too. Granted it's easier to learn 50 names/faces compared to 300+, but it's definitely not impossible for those who can be bothered.

Our village school is like that but it's infants school only. They go to a bigger junior school which has full 30 child classes.

If it's like that it's fine as boys & girls are quite happy together at that age.

If it's a primary rather than infants than I would be more concerned.

My children go to a school where there are only 15 in the entire school!!! One P1-P7 class.

My daughter is the only child in her entire year. She does most of her work with the year above. She loves it and she's absolutely thriving.

The great thing about a small school is they all play together. They tend to be far better funded than bigger schools so my children have had such amazing opportunities. If they are ahead or behind for their year group then the teaching is adjusted for them because they know each child individually and can assign tasks almost individually if necessary.

Honestly, from an education perspective I couldn't be happier.

It is a little bit trickier from a social side, but only because my daughter had one other girl in her year for the first 2 years, who then left as she was out of zone and her parents decided to go back to zone (the logistics were complicated). She misses her pal and I think it would have been easier if she'd always been the only one, as it was supposed to be.

She is very into a couple of sports so lots of opportunities to make friends there. We made sure to keep all her activities to the town where she will go to secondary, so by the time she gets there she will know lots of faces.

It does worry me occasionally but I think the pluses overall outweigh the minuses and she absolutely adores school and learning.

Ummm… because boys are not girls and girls are not boys?🙄

Frankly I’d be unhappy with this arrangement and would look elsewhere. It’s so important for girls to have other little girlfriends.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the school closed, if there are others around it doesn’t make sense to have several tiny schools all with one teacher for 8 kids.

The headteacher advised that whilst they don't plan to combine school years, they have plans for my daughter to have a buddy (a girl who happens to be our immediate neighbour) and to increase the interaction between reception and year 1 so my daughter has more interaction with girls.

From this it sounds like it's not a situation they have experienced before so I would take her advice with a pinch of salt and suspect once they go back in September any suggestions go quickly out the window as F2 and YR1 are very different beasts and I can't see when they would implement this increased interaction.

If there's multiple other schools near you with low numbers but a better mix I would honestly look to move her. She would still get the benefit of a small cohort but without the downside of being the only girl.

Exactly, there’s nothing natural about it, they are just socialised to.

That would be a lot of pressure on her/the other girl to be friends! What if they didn’t gel?

Do all the classes with 8-10 children have a teacher per class?

This is an odd set up and I would wonder financially how viable it is without combining classes. If the class numbers are falling rapidly year on year then I'd be considering other schools too.

I’d run a mile. Have awful experience of tiny classes having gone to a tiny rural school myself. My poor sister was trapped for years with a psycho girl there were only 2 other girls so she had nowhere to go.

It was no accident our own dc went to a school with 2 /3 form entry. Nice deep friendship pool.

Maybe it’s different at different schools. I just can’t imagine the relationships that were built in my tiny primary school being possible in an average sized school. That goes for teacher-pupil relationships and pupil-pupil relationships. Having the same teacher for yr 3,4,5 and 6 and that same teacher watching us at play time and leading us out at the end of the day to speak to our parents is very different to having a different teacher for every year and a different lunchtime supervisor depending on the day (our school has multiple) and at the end of the day the kids could be passed to us parents by any number of teacher (main class teacher, one of the 2 TAs, the music teacher, the teacher who covers the class once a week).

My point to the OP is that in a big school everything is done as a class. Playtimes are often allocated as set times for set classes or areas for set classes. Whereas with a tiny school then all year groups play together and so girls from all different years will be openly encouraged to engage with one another. My primary school teacher would come and sit by me if I was sat on my own at break time and find out what’s wrong. My youngest child’s teacher doesn’t even know what he gets up to at break times when I ask at parents evenings.

I do genuinely believe that teachers know pupils better in small schools, but I’m not saying a smaller school is better because of this. After all, I’ve sent my own children to a bigger school despite having smaller school options, but I think it should be reassuring to OP to know that the teachers will be easily able to keep an eye on her daughter in a school as small as the one she’s going to and therefore her daughter will be encouraged to play with children with similar interests even if it’s a different year group.

Where are all these small primary schools!? I was in a school with 60 spaces per year, split across 2 classes 🤣

It sounds to me like you're making assumptions based on your own personal experience. All schools are different. It's not a case of that's what small schools are all like are that's what large schools are all like.

Why is it incorrect?

Could she do some extra curricular activities like rainbows where she can have social time and build friendships with other girls. A small primary class is great for learning, so maybe take that opportunity and balance it out with activities out of school to widen her social circle.

Because they don't. Any differences between boys and girls at that age are social and not 'natural'.