Consultation

Errington Primary School is consulting with its stakeholders regarding a proposed reduction in its published admission number from 35 to 30 for our reception class beginning in September 2023.

Errington is a thriving school with a new Head Teacher who is ambitious for its future success. Errington regularly attracts additional pupils in-year over and above its published admission number. We want to ensure that the school reaches the optimal point in terms of meeting pupils’ needs, serving the community and utilising the funding we receive to best effect. Tees Valley Collaborative Trust Board, Errington Local Governing Body, The Chief Executive Officer and the school’s Head Teacher have concluded that these goals can best be achieved by reducing the published admission number.

We want to make this reduction for several reasons. The first and most important is the legal requirement that classes in key stage 1 must not exceed 30 pupils per one fully qualified teacher. We do not have any flexibility in our budget to increase the number of teachers to accommodate numbers over 30 or enable smaller class sizes to be made.

A second important factor is building constraints: some of the classrooms at Errington are not designed to take numbers higher than the 30 and therefore teaching spaces are restricted in terms of independence and comfortable learning space.

Thirdly, with numbers above 30 at Key Stage 1, pupils’ learning could be hindered as a teacher is not able to give bespoke support or guidance as there are too many pupils within one class to stretch, extend and support as we would like to do. Numbers above 30 could also limit greater educational achievement as there isn’t the capacity to cater for differing needs and abilities where there are so many pupils and therefore the learning process for many is not as productive as we would like. The school does not have sufficient physical resources i.e. science, books, to cater for such large classes of children.

For these reasons we believe 30 is the optimum number for maximising our pupils’ achievement and enjoyment of learning, utilising our teaching and support staff’s skills and generating the best value for the funding we receive.

The change proposed will not affect any of the arrangements for children who are currently pupils at the school. Where we currently have classes above 30 at Key Stage 2 we will continue to maximize their learning and achievement by reducing the group size using the physical and human resources available to us.

Following our consultation, we will reduce our admission number to 30 in 2023. This will be for the reception children joining us in 2023 – all other class sizes will move through school as of our previous admission numbers – please see admissions page on this website for more details.