London school very small

[lost19]

Hello, my daughter goes to a lovely school in London. It’s a one form entry (it used to be two but all schools in the area knocked a form off due to mass exodus from London and low birth rate). It was a class of 30 but now down to low 20s (in year 3) and I have a feeling more will depart: my concern is how small is too small? I think education wise, great. But what about social side? She has some wonderful friends in the class and I think I know at least 5 that will plan to stay through to end of primary. But has anyone experienced a knock on effect with things like clubs, residential (can they even go ahead with such a small group?) and just general negativity? Is she going to struggle with this? Is this normal for London?

My eldest’s year 6 classed went down to I think 17 children - South London . Residential and other activities went ahead as normal. I was concerned that the school was going to close eventually as yr1-6 were all single form entry with less than 30 children ( I had a younger child there ). But they got enough applicants for reception so are back to two form entry Partly helped I think that due to adding a nursery.

If there is a larger suitable school, I'd look into it. A setting with a one-form intake, especially if it's a smaller private school intake, is likely to be really claustrophobic.
The state CofE primary in our village was lovely but ...
Socially, my DDs found a one-form intake school to be really small. DD1 really struggled b/c there were only 10 girls in her year of 20. Two of them were besties and one of those was a mean bully. Other girls had preferred friends and poor DD just circled round the outside being everyone's 3rd choice.
DD2 was at the same school and in a similarly small class. In her class, the girls split roughly into 2 groups due to interests. There was one girl who serially best-friended each girl in DD's group and then dumped her after a few months: 'I'm playing with C today. We want to play on our own'. It was utterly brutal.
Each year most of the same pupils were in a class together; sometimes there were leavers or joiners but the core was the same. The school had 6 classes over the 7 years (R - 6) so some pupils stayed on for a year in the same class.
Education-wise, it can be equally suffocating: teachers know pupils' strengths/weaknesses well but, in such a small setting, pupils pick up on things so there's no disguising ability levels...

Some children actually changed to schools in nearby villages to get away from the social misery.

I would recommend giving it some time, to see how your dd finds being in a smaller school, @lost19. There are advantages and disadvantages to big schools and small ones, so it may be better to wait and see whether the advantages of a smaller school outweigh the disadvantages for your child.

The lack of dc will hugely affect the budget. There are big issues with a falling budget. Lack of money to pay for staff is the big one. Schools need to amalgamate.