September reception starters - how many will be in your child’s class?

[rainsbows]

We’ve had our first induction event for ds. It’s usually a heavily oversubscribed 3 form entry. As it stands each class will only have 25 children. Guessing due to falling birth rate. Personally I think it’s great but appreciate the school will miss out on funding.

There's a higher chance of secondaries also closing or reducing PAN significantly.

A local secondary school which is oversubscribed tried to increase their PAN last year and were told because of falling birth rates it would have too much of a knock on impact on the local undersubscribed school if they were able to!

DD's school has cut one class for next year to avoid having 3 x 23 which is currently the case

Interestingly, Montessori schools combine three year groups in one class (age 3-6, 6-9 etc). It is proven to be very effective.
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Maybe we need to move to a more flexible model like this?

I teach two years together and really it's fine. Some years we get 100% at Expected in all SATS papers, which shows our results don't suffer (and this is not a leafy catchment, it's over 50% pupil premium). What's tricky is moving between year group and mixed classes as the curriculum is set up for one or the other.

It’s very regional. I’m on the edge of a rural market town in Somerset & many of the primary schools are oversubscribed. Our tiny village school has less than 50 pupils, but the incoming YrR is oversubscribed at 9 (which is ok as the outgoing Yr6 is 9 too) but we’ve taken in a lot of in-year transfers too. DS’s year started with 4 & has doubled to 8 in the space of 3 years.
All but one of the local secondary schools (which are spread quite widely due to rural area) are oversubscribed too. DD is in Yr6 & her year group at secondary has had to increase from 172 to 195 & still some local children haven’t got spaces.
Theres been a lot of house building over the past decade locally & that’s showing in school admissions so there may be a birth rate decline but it’s not obvious locally yet.

30 x 3 forms in my DCs’ oversubscribed London state primary. Leafy area where nearly all kids go state for primary then about 60% private for secondary. It’s a lovely school had recently got a glowing outstanding ofsted. The catchment has actually shrunk in recent years such that my DC2 only got a place as a sibling - would be out on distance.