What are very small schools like?

[Kathyis6incheshigh]

Does anyone have any experience?

We have what seems to be a very nice school in our village and we are assuming we will be sending dd there next year. The intake is usually about 11 in each year, and the school just has 4 classes. Both dh and I went to much bigger primaries (2 classes of 30 in each year) and it seems this is a totally different kettle of fish.... just wondering if there is anything I should be aware of.
Thanks

This is all very helpful & interesting.
Squonk - the playing out thing is just what I am hoping! The village has 2 play areas and quite a lot of village green type space and you do see kids hanging around a bit.
Re. buildings, it's actually v good - the old Victorian school is now an after-school club and the primary is all newish with big playing fields.
This is deffo a village full of people who've lived here all their lives - it's not a holiday cottage type area - so there is likely to be all that cousin stuff going on!
I am pretty much decided now that this is def the right place for me to start DD off - if there are going to be any issues about friendship, limitations of teaching, not differentiating enough in mixed ability classes, then these are likely to only come into play further down the line.

Our local village school is this size, it's lovely. Before we moved here the dds were in a school with 200 children and then one with over 300, and we were a bit unsure about small schools. But it's fine.

Ours has lots of afterschool clubs and activities, a choice of several every day. It's something they have been working on. It also has a before and after school club.

Friendships. My dds are encouraged to make friends across the year groups and there is a big emphasis on being friendly with other ages. not just with the other 12 in your year. This seems to work well, dd1's best friend is a year older.

Mixed-ability teaching. Our school teaches most subjects in small ability-based groups, and on occasion the top child or two in a year will work with the year above. So it's not more of an issue than it was in the bigger schools.

Recruitment of teachers issues. Not here. The recent teacher vacancy had 90 applicants.

My DD goes to a huge primary school - 600+ pupils.

I'm sure the smaller schools would be better from a teacher to pupil ratio but I would worry about the social aspect of them. Just from the point of view of if there are a smaller number of kids in the school then the chances are that there is also a fairly narrow range of kids from differing backgrounds and also fewer different types of personalities. I don't mean that village school kids are clones or anything, just that a child has a better chance of finding someone they have something in common with iof they have a larger pool to choose from.

Also, what happens when the kids go to secondary school which is even bigger again than a large primary ? Are the children from tiny schools overwhelmed by the HUGENESS of the school and perhaps ill-prepared for the sheer number of other pupils (both socially and academically) ?

DS! is in P1, he is in a class of 3. Our school only has two classes. 1,2 and 3 , then 4-7. THe children have great confidence when mixing with children of other ages, which you don't get in larger schools.

That is not to say I don't have worries about him going from a school of 30 pupils to 1500 pupils for High School.

Just moved my daughter from a small school (circa 70 pupils) to a larger one (circa 200.

Before she went to the small school, I was worried about the ability spread given that there would be two year groups in each class. I can honestly say that this aspect never turned out to be problematical.

The big problem seemd to be with friendshiup groups. At one point, there were only two other girls on dd's year group. And they simpluy didn't "click" with my dd. DD did make friends in other year groups - but then there was a lot of upset when half of the class moved into the next class up, taking her friends with it. (And I know that some children have similar problems in larger primary schools, when classes are mixed up from year to year).

I guess what all of my exeriences have driummed home is that there is no single "best school" - it all depends on what is right for a particular child. Some children definitely thrive in a small school - for others its a bit claustrophobic. Let your daughter start there, and see how she gets on.

Pros: family atmosphere; head knows every family; you feel that people are really keeping an eye on your child: lovely when they're little.

Cons: if you're not a 'mainstream' child socially you might suffer from not having a big pool of potential friends. My daughter is very sociable and conventional and had no problems; my slightly more eccentric son struggled sometimes.

DD's prep school is pretty small - DD is in one of the bigger class, in a class of 14. In the whole school there is perhaps up to 90 children. none of the classes are mixed year group, even with small classes, which I love.

It is lovely. There is a really friendly, cosy atmosphere where everyione knows one another, and the children from the different year groups all play together. We chose it over other schools because of the small classes, the individual attention the girls get and the lovely atmosphere that is given off whenever you walk throught he door.

For a primary school I think it is a great environment.