Large secondary schools

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Hello all, we are after some thoughts about large secondary schools. We were both lucky enough to go to small schools but our local secondary has a 12 form intake and it seems massive to us! I realise a lot of schools are like this or moving this way. We absolutely cannot afford private schools, and I don't think our children would get into grammars even if we could afford to buy a house there. We can both work anywhere in the country. Interested in opinions from teachers / parents / ex pupils who have been at really large schools like this. Do issues or quiet children get a bit lost?

This is interesting User . So do you apply just for the school, and get allocated a site? How do they measure distance? Do they field combined sports teams for inter-school matches? Are trips eg MFL co-organised?

You apply for the school and get allocated a site. There is kind of a double catchment (one catchment for each site) so if you are in catchment you are guaranteed your catchment site. Distance tiebreaker is to nearest site and students will be assigned to sites based on distance. There are situations every year due to the geography (there are more houses nearer site A than site B) where students get assigned to the site they don't want and then have to make a "site transfer" request which is managed solely by the school and obviously offers no guarantees! There are also definitely cases where parents want to be able to specify

1. School X Site A
2. School Y
3. School X site B

on the admissions form ... but this isn't possible so they have to make a judgement on whether to put School X or School Y first knowing that they might end up with School X Site B whereas they would have got place at School Y if they'd put it first.

I don't know about sports teams (neither of my DC are sporty), but trips are organised across school (or they were pre Covid; don't know about what will happen ongoing). They also do joint things like e.g. a theatre group coming in to explore a GCSE text which they'll run across the whole year group.
Academically, the experience of being a student in (say) Year 9 at Site A as compared to a Year 9 student at site B, will vary only in the same way as a Year 9 student in 2 different classes at the same site. The 2 sites have the same assessments and exams which are sat at the same time and teachers moderate across the whole year.

Thank you, that's really interesting.

Our quiet shy child is in a year group of 330 (11 forms).

Advantages- loads of extra curricular activities on offer, choice of 3 languages (school sells itself as a science specialist school), wide range of GCSE and alternative qualifications. Same Form teacher for years 7-11

Disadvantages - busy site, sheer numbers of children. Feeling lost and overwhelmed at times.

All this has been countered by excellent pastoral support, reception staff that welcome her by name and a communication system that lets all the teachers and support staff know this is child who has been struggling and who benefits from small, but crucial, adjustments.

I'm not sure a smaller school would have the resources to have a staffed pupil support unit with staff available to help at any point during the school day.

I'm happy with the 10 form school that kids go to/went to.

I've only needed help from the school a couple of times and things were sorted quickly. My kids don't have SEN and were happy to be under the radar tbh. Teenagers are all about their friends and big schools are more likely to have kids who are like yours.

My ds came from a 1 form primary and had a classmate who is autistic. He was happy at the primary but he's even happier to have met boys like him. There have been tricky times for him (big schools mean lots of jostling and noise at lunch etc) but it's worked out well for him too.

School is split into two halves for yr7&8 by language learnt so they learn a different language and will have all subjects in their language half of the year, so for example someone studying French would never have a class with someone studying Spanish. This helps them to settle and meet friends, clubs and assembly are shared. Yr9 they narrow their options a little and a yr9 music class would have children from both halves, whereas English is still mainly their half. Essentially the further on they go the more they mix the year group up.

It seems to work well, especially for the more quirky child who is more likely to find their peer group than they might with a smaller pool of peers. A larger school often means more resources and specialist support might be more likely. It especially is useful if they have a health or learning need. If there are 360 pupils each year rather than 180 it would take twice as many school year intakes in the smaller school to see the same number of children coming through. So say a condition affects 1 in 1000 children, in the small school they might not have admitted anyone with that condition for 7yrs, in a larger school they probably currently have two or three pupils with that condition.

We’ve found that, @Cattitudes. The school had a full set of small adaptations already planned for my daughter’s medical condition because they’ve seen similar before. It meant they came up with ideas that I hadn’t even thought to ask for, but which will really make a difference for her.