How long can this continue

[pastapeteliketoeat]

Hello,

Apologies for jumping on this board I'm a parent not a teacher, but I really wanted teacher and school staff views. No teacher bashing or moaning, I promise!

How long, in your professional experience/views, can a local auth maintained school continue with drastically falling numbers?

Can't give too many details as its outing, but generally speaking this is the situation. Small primary school, intake of 15 per year. Normal for it to be mixed Y1/2 class, Y3/4 and Y5/6. Only reception is solo.

School has many issues which have become apparent more and more over the last 18m. Parents are voting with their feet. Reception and Y1/2 class no huge problems, significant issues in KS2 and with the Head. First Head position, has been there 9 years. No SL Team as such, as there is only the Head, 5 teachers and some TAs. One member of admin staff too.

Capacity is 105. Numbers are down to around 80.

My own children are having mixed experiences but are generally ok bar very limited friendship pools as time wears on. There have been some specific things which I have addressed and resolved. Not to my satisfaction really, but will have to do.

I don't want to move them unless I have to for various reasons but it all feels a bit like rats off a sinking ship at the moment and unless there is huge change then I can't see things improving. I'm also worried about it closing entirely, is this likely?

Can anyone share thoughts on this?

Thank you.

In our area this is sort of being balanced out by the massive rise in SEND. Increasingly these schools with falling numbers open one or more SEND bases with their spare staff and classroom space.

That's an interesting thought, thanks.

There are no spare staff, or classroom space as such. They're (so they say) struggling massively to manage the few children they already have who have SEND, even with the tiny class sizes. There would be nowhere, unless they literally built an additional building on the grounds, to have any sort of dedicated SEND space/hub.

I'd be amazed if the local auth ever sent EHCP children to them from elsewhere, it's not happened yet. Whenever one of their existing children tries to obtain one or pushes for general SEND support they usually say they cannot meet the child's needs, so the parents end up moving them elsewhere.

That's not why numbers have dropped so drastically overall, but it is a contributing factor.

I'm in an area with lots of very small schools and don't actually think that sounds too bad given how much birth rates are falling. Nearly all schools have lower numbers than 5 years ago. We are absolutely fine for as far ahead as we can forecast and I've not heard of any rumblings at all from the LA about amalgamating or closing any schools. 80 children is a lot to accommodate if other local schools are generally small too and then there are transport costs to consider. Lots of schools round here operate with just 2 classes which your school is a long way off.