Class sizes in secondary?

[roisin]

I love the boys' school and they are both thriving there, so it's not a complaint. But I did raise an eyebrow tonight when ds2 said there were 33 students in his class.

When I've checked further they both say there are 30-34 students in just about every class. (Fewer for Tech).

At my school there aren't many classrooms that have 30 chairs/tables, let alone 34!

But the marking is great, differentiation, progress, etc. Behaviour seems good. So I'm not fussed. But I am surprised.

It may be they deliberately make savings at KS3 on class sizes in order to have smaller groups at KS4. But we've not got that far yet.

You may also find the bottom set is substantially smaller...... even at KS3

Yes, that's true.

No, actually, what am I thinking of?!
ds2's classes are not in sets at all, they are taught in mixed ability form groups for all lessons. So I would conclude they are all of a similar size!

Yep it's common for me to have 34 in my classes at KS3 - slightly fewer for GCSE and 20+ for A level.
At KS3 I'm almost glad when someone is away as we have a bit more breathing space! and Year 10 and 11 boys are huge - when I have 25 of my 30 who are boys and they are nearly 6ft tall I get claustrophobic.

Tech subjects should in theory be 21 but are frequently a bit higher. Having 33 or 34 in a class is not unusual but has to be seen in the context of the overall number of pupils in the year group and how many over PAN that is.
The answer, given they are not being put in sets, is probably either that they are over PAN and therefore needing to put more in each class or that the school is running with one teaching group less than would normally be expected.

We had 18 year 7's who came to us on appeal last year, hence the big numbers- 2 extra per teaching group quickly adds up.

Yes, it's a popular school. So I guess as Lucycat suggests, it's due to successful appeals where the LEA is forcing the school to admit additional students.

Roisin,
It is not actually the LA who is forcing the school to admit additional pupils, it is the independant appeal panel. In fact the LA or the school if they are their own admission authority should have been arguing not to admit any extra pupils.
That actually suggests that the school's case is weak that they are getting so many successful appeals. Most panels would not be admitting more pupils if they knew that the school was operating at classes of 32/33, so not sure what is going on.
Having said that it is not unknown for some schools to readily admit extra pupils over their admission limit or openly admit at appeal panels that they don't have a problem taking the pupils.

Hmm.. that's interesting admission.
I wonder where one might obtain such information.

The PAN was 210, which is 7 forms of 30 students. On allocation day this was the number allocated. But presumably between now and then there are another 14+ students in the year.

Maybe they thought they could easily squeeze them in and accommodate them and wanted the dosh, so didn't fight the appeals too hard? Who knows?

With a PAN of 210, they either are not full and are running 6 classes of 33 = circa 198 or they are running 7 classs of 33 = 231, which suggests 21 extra pupils, which is a lot to admit on appeal.
If you phone the school up, most schools will tell you how many they have in the year group, if only to tell you how over-subscribed they are.
What nobody is going to tell you because only the panel will know is why 21+ students were admitted at appeal, if that was the case.