School size - big or small - does it matter?

[zower]

Hi, am in middle of choosing secondary school for my DS.

All the schools in our area seem big to me (minimum 150 i.e. 5 form entry.) But one I was interested in has 240 entry, which must mean 8 form entry. I find this size of school mind-boggling to be honest.

Am a bit worried! Do people think its possible to thrive in such large schools? I wondered if people had positive or negative experience?

don't refresh again got a few of these going.Normal size schools where I'm from is about 800 form entry, so English schools seem tiny to me.

sorry, accidentally posted twice!

800!

For me, a 240 form entry over 7 years means approx. 1500 children in a whole school. how do children feel "known" or do they find some way? are there any advantages?

Yes, there are advantages.

Remember that your child will be picking options a couple of years into their school career. You want there to be plenty of options, and not to be told that they only have enough staff (or children) for one set of history so your child will have to take geography; or can't do French as there was more interest in German.

One of mine has been at a 1500-strong comp (and that's across 5 years, not 7), and it's fine. Individual classes are still around the 15 to 30 mark. And there are some very good organisational structures put in place to track every pupil.

Another is at a 1000-pupil school, currently 8-form intake so all the year 7 tutor groups are around 25.

Kind of assuming that lljkk wasn't in fact at a school with 800 forms in each year.

Now that would be scary.

lol, probably schools like that in China or India.
I meant 800 pupils in a yr group, the whole "form" thing confuses heck out of me.
My school actually had only about 90 in our yr group. And by no means did I know them all. My general prejudice is in favour of bigger over smaller, more resources to go around.

yes- as kitties has explained, comps have to be big else children will be severely limited in their options. Even GSs usually have at least 4 form entry - below that even they'd be constrained in their choices at GCSE.

Schools have various strategies - some use 'houses' (or similar) to subdivide the huge number into more manageable chunks.

There are advantages and disadvantages. There are seven classes in my dds level at primary school. We have an art room, a huge library, two halls, endless outside space but she is never going to have a speaking part in the school play.

DD1s comp has 8 forms per year group but only goes to 16.

For the first couple of years they run two halves for time tabling purposes, so two set 1s for maths for example.

The major benefits of this size of year group for her have been

• ability to find friends with similar interests

(though she did take some time to find them)

• really good flexibility of options for GCSE
• also I suspect, less range in each set, particularly useful for maths

My ds (Y10) is at (and dd (Y6) has applied to) a school with 400 per year and he's getting on great, the large size means they can more accurately set into ability groups (no grammars or privates near so it's fully comp) and they can offer a wide choice of options at GCSE time. I've never experienced a smaller school though so maybe this could happen there too.

well, we are in this position too op with secondary choices. The best school, which we think is likely to be our first choice is a 270 entry, which is huge. (to me) the others are all around 120-150

But there really is a massive difference in the schools, results, atmosphere etc.

So I would say the size isn't the most important thing. make sure you visit them all and see what you think. I was surprised by how I felt about different schools (maybe based on really small insignificant things!!)

she is never going to have a speaking part in the school play.

this is the sort of thing where some schools might do a play per 'house' instead/as well as one big 'school play'.

Like all things, it can cut two ways.

A bigger school means more options (at GCSE etc).

OTOH, I once asked at an Open Day how they cope with that many. How does the Headteacher know each individual child? The response was "Don't be daft. The Head doesn't even know every teacher!"

haha ....my daughter had 40 to a class ....5 classes per year .. over 6 years....thats 1200 kids for primary.. .That was considered a small school....

The more children ....the more oppurtunity to meet friends that are right for you...

Interesting the positive responses, makes sense. V. helpful, thanks.

One thing I would consider is whether the school is 'meant' to be that big. We had the option of a smaller (80 per year) and a bigger (180 per year) school. Dd chose the smaller for other reasons, but I know one disadvantage of the larger school from talking to other parents is that it was built for a much smaller intake, so everything is crammed in to buildings that aren't really ideal.

Other than that I think there would generally be a lot to recommend a larger school - small size was a major negative when we were looking at dd's current school (eg they only have the resources to offer 1 MFL).

the big school we are interested in for example has a Head of Year and a student manager for each year group. The student manager is a non teaching post who it seems is there to look after the 270 odd kids in his/her year.

One of those moves on up the school with them, so there is someone who knows all the kids well.

My daughter goes to a comp with 1500 pupil and the annual intake is around the 240 mark your talking about. She is really happy there and the size doesn't bother her one bit. As a parent, I'm interested in the fact that the Ofsted report is good, the pass levels at GCSE and the fact that with a big school, she has so many more options available to her. For instance, there are lots of lunchtime and after school clubs, their Head of Year mainly concentrates on this and is always available at breaktimes for them and that she has a wide selection of other pupils she comes across. Even though she's in a big school, her tutor group only had 21 pupils (now 24). Their tutor and Head of Year stay with them constantly throughout school, so they do get to know them really well.

Don't let the size of the school worry you, visit all possibilities and go with your gut. We were very impressed by the above school and the other school we looked at was totally the opposite.

Yes I see things more broadly now! I have always been aware of the positive aspects of a smaller school, so useful to get more balance here. Soon we will be making our decision

Looking at the above, I'd be asking at a larger school:

How do you ensure you track pupil progress?
Do you have a head of year or year manager?
Does the tutor stay with the form group as they move up?
How often do you have whole-yeargroup activities?

For a small school I'd be asking:
How wide a range of options can you offer?
If a form-group doesn't gel, what do you do about it (probably nothing!)
What extracurricular clubs do you offer?

Then you can get a feel for whether it's a large and chaotic or large and vibrant school; or conversely a tiny, friendly, flexible place or a too small and restrictive one.

Errol, DS's school has a play per year group!

Good thing he's not a middling but keen sportsman, though. You need to be good to get on a school team in such a big place.

We have two schools in our town which are (IMO) large - 10 form intake. One is good, the other less so. There are many things to judge on; size is only one of them.

I had to google dc's schools as I found I had no idea of student numbers: turns out ds' secondary has about 1500 and dd's Sixth Form college around 2500. Both are fine, neither feels lost.

Secondaries are different from primary schools: pupils have more activities to choose from and not everybody is going to want to do the same thing. The school play will be done by the pupils who are interested in drama and the others will be doing something else. It's a different experience being the parent of a secondary school child, but very exciting when you see them growing in independence and finding out more about who they are and what they want.

Around here the school that is cramped has about 1000 pupils in total. My DCs school with 2000 always feels spacious, and has room for flexibility. The bigger size means it can offer more options, and it has very good systems in place to ensure no child "falls through the cracks"; better in my opinion than the smaller school.
I went to a big school and it never worried me.

Size does matter. However, it's not straight forward. A big school can be very effective at creating smaller safe communities within bigger ones. It is also worth noting that the schools that are deemed to be best by the DfE are given the go ahead to expand. www.how-to-choose-a-school.org/summary/school-size.html gives excellent advice on just this issue.

Our very large school has Heads of Year, Pastoral Support Officers for the year (and 'Learning Managers' for the KeyStage). And form tutors stay with the class where possible. There are ways to deal with the negatives.