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 disagree that small schools usually attract kids with extra learning needs. Quite the opposite at our school, and area, where multiple parents of SEND kids have looked around our school then opted instead for the bigger schools with extra teaching assistants and learning centres, over our small school.

Mine was the only girl in a class intake of 6 but there were more girls in year 1. Yes a tiny village school - 30 in total that then ferderated with 2 other village schools. All 3 of mine went there and then onto a State comp of about 1100. Was never an issue for any of them. All had top GCSEs and A Levels and then onto university for good degrees.
Really don't stress about it. DD now teaches reception class in the local town with 30 of very mixed abilities. Now, that is a totally different thread for another day - and not a good one.

I, as a child, and my girls when they were that age, would have loved this set up.

Will her class be multigrade? If so, she'll make friends with the other girls in the classroom and benefit from the small class numbers re education.

I can only say what happens in our local area. It is well known. And I was a HT for many years. We were very happy to take them, I may add. But if there are 8 children and I girl it may impact the OPs thinking.

Different physical abilities and hormones.

At the school’s my husband and I attended in different parts of the country, most of the boys would play football most of their lunch breaks and almost none of the girls would. At my school only one girl wanted to play football all lunchtime. All the other girls, and some of the boys, the ones who didn’t want to play football, would hang out on the playground or other parts of the field at lunch. Same happened in secondary school.

I don’t have a huge sample size but I think this is quite common.

Of course you have to be in a school large enough to form at least two football teams per year group. Maybe attending a small village school means you don’t get to observe this really obvious difference. But unless it was just our schools, it shows a difference in how boys and girls generally want to spend their time at lunchtimes. Day in day out for years.

i think there’s an obvious physical reason why boys might prefer spending nearly an hour running up and down a field while it might be less fun for the girls to do the same.

@NonstopMam The dc with no EHCPs cannot get into the specialist learning centres where I live at 4. There’s no guarantee they get into them at 7 either. The larger schools don’t have more teaching assistants either as small schools get a small schools premium. I’ve certainly observed many small schools being used as havens for send dc. Parents hate the thought of larger YR classes and want the family atmosphere of village schools. We have quite a few with too many send pupils who come from a larger town. It’s been this way for decades.

@cranberryshortcake This was exactly what happened at the school DDs attended. Boys played football and girls chatted! Only a few do both! What they do at 10 isn’t the same as 4.

@cranberryshortcake I agree…before I had kids I thought there was no difference in boys and girls, it was just how they are raised. I was wrong!! I see some mixed friendship groups at the infant school I work in, but there seem to be barely any at my eldest’s junior school. In infant school the girls hang out in little groups, play mums and dads with maybe one boy in there to be the husband / baby, use the skipping ropes and hoops a lot, practice cartwheels, handstands and splits, run around pretending they are unicorns or horses or dogs etc. The boys race, use the ball games more, make dens, dig holes, make mess in the mud kitchen, chase each other, etc. Even the way they use the trim trail differs; the boys see how fast they can get round it or how high they can climb. The girls use it to do gymnastics on (cartwheels off it, hanging upside down on it) and for make believe games like using it as a billy goats bridge etc. It’s quite fascinating! Obviously there are exceptions but generally.

Same in our tiny infant school. There’s a disproportionate amount of SEN. I think it’s because parents who are concerned with how thier pre-schooler is gojng to take to school (due to social or behavioural issues) go for the smaller class size option so their child isn’t being overhwhelmed. Also the parents often also have some kind of ND themselves and had a negative school experience, so they do everything that can to choose a more alternative experience for their child. They place less value on results, sports teams, music lessons etc and more value on a nurturing environment, good school grounds with lots of outdoor provision, etc.

My sister was the only girl in a class of 4. She was a bit of a tomboy (still is). She made friends with the girls in the year above and below, so she always had girl friends. But, tbh, in tiny schools everyone plays with everyone else a lot anyway. You can’t get a good game of kick the can going without everyone joining in!

The girls didn't want to play football or other running around games, or they couldn't as the boys dominated the space?

(DDs are at Secondary. The boys recently got a ban from the field for a week due to several issues... the girls made good use of the field during that time including sports, and these were Secondary aged girls!)

I was in a class of 6 - 2 girls (including me) and 4 boys. The other girl was absolutely not someone I'd choose to spend time with but I got on great with the boys and a couple of girls in the year below (the school was so small they had to mix years). Your DC will be fine!

I wouldn't worry, more girls may join later and my DD tends to surround herself with boy-friends anyway in primary school. We did a trial for her at a local private school, class of 8 and she would have been one of two girls, but they would mix year groups together sometimes so there were more in those cases

Wow 8 in a class - people pay good money for those kind of numbers! My DS daughter is in Y1 and there are 12 in her class and she is flying academically as the teacher has more time to dedicate individually. This is in comparison to DD who attends a much larger two form entry with 60 in her year and just in her class there are 18 girls which can be fraught with problems.

I get where you're coming from there and academia aside, I would probably look to enroll her in things like Rainbows so she has a wider social circle.

@lilkitten In a small school with 1 girl, you won’t get 5 girls joining later. A school of this size doesn’t attract pupils in any number of one sex and my DDs would never have joined one solitary girl. It’s not giving a friendship choice. It’s hugely limiting.

If boys and girls are all the same, the boys don’t dominate! The dc choose what they wish to do. Girls have the space if they want it or play with the boys. Most girls don’t want that type of play. If they do they can join in.

I assumed it would be a merged year but I see not. 8 in a class is great but the only girl....yesh I would worry, even with the buddy scheme.

DD went to a small village primary, she was one of 3 girls in her year. They had a mixed class of 2 years but still only 14 pupils in the class. I mean the teaching was great and dd thrived educationally. She struggled for friends. The other 2 girls excluded her, girls from the other year didn't mix with the year below even though they were in the same classroom. DD still talks about how miserable she was.

No, I wouldn't be happy 8 in a class and being the only girl.

I am astonished this is financially viable-we are at 23 rather than 30 in some classes and it is punishing on our budgets. If we could have full classes, the funding that would have brought would have meant we wouldn't have had to make so many of the TAs redundant.

I can't believe they can afford to pay the teacher with those pupil numbers! I would go for it if you like the school. There's bound to be movement over the years - my DC's class roll has changed by 50% since reception. I would think it's pretty likely they will end up merging year groups soon - that small a class is unsustainable financially for the school. We're in a similar village with two schools and one is much better attended than the other (largely for snobbish reasons I believe). We're at the larger school and I sometimes wish we'd opted for the smaller class sizes.

Headteacher here...it's not financially viable to maintain a class of 8. You need 23/24 kids just to break even. The governing body WILL be discussing strategies to save money in the future. On parents tours I'm often asked about pupil numbers and parents mistakenly believe it's better to have 18/19 pupils in a class. This is NOT true in state education and low numbers mean a very tight budget, less experienced teachers (cause you can't afford to pay more expensive teachers), fewer opportunities/resources for pupils and lots of 'asks' from parents eg paying for swimming etc. The HT wants you to stay as if your child goes it won't look good for the school and they lose the funding your child brings. I would be looking to apply to the oversubscribed school in a heartbeat. My local authority has closed 3 primary schools this year alone due to low numbers.

That’s what I was trying to say further up but you’ve worded it much better!
Is it possible that they have unqualified teachers or can’t they do that in uk state schools?

Boleyn Memories is correct. The academy trust will be pooling funding from all their school. They will also have cost savings like shared HT's across sites and mixed year groups. Or they are running a deficit budget and will close in a few years...

When I was at primary, I went to our local school, the only one in the town, but there was also a tiny, 2 class school in the village just outside.

When I went to secondary school, all 5 of the kids from this school who were transferring to secondary were placed together in the one class, in my class - the powers that be thought they wouldn't cope not knowing anyone if they were all placed in separate classes

They were all from farming families and were joined at the hip. It was bizarre. Their parents wanted them separate from town life - they wanted to maintain their friendship group as part of the farming community.

Small schools can be less than diversified. They can be small, closed communities where outsiders won't easily fit in.

You can have unqualified teachers in state sector but you can't fill a school with them so it's not a long term solution. They are probably taking the hit for one year and will merge with Y1 next year if another small intake year.

@Blomama It’s very difficult for a LA to close a school these days. Governors often hate the idea as well as rural parents. However it is ridiculous to have too many tiny schools each with a head, governors, running costs, maintenance etc. it’s one reason why many schools don’t have enough money. It’s not sustainable to have a school of 30 when other schools are available locally.

The Government publishes details of classes and gender, numbers, etc., but I don't think they actually record where there are imbalances of pupils according to sex.

I haven't checked it yet.