St Boniface RC Primary School Post Reply

[Cloud]

LauraBrown: regarding class sizes, I haven't asked the question of St B, but I recently looked around Trinity St Mary's who also have smaller class sizes and was told by the headteacher that they have the same budget as other schools, it is just the way she manages her budget and prioritises teaching costs. I assume the same goes for St B.

[LauraBrown]

Cool, thanks Cloud. I guess it had to be that - I wonder what they choose to have less of. Interesting.

[erinisle22]

Laura, here's the uniform link:

http://www.unismart.co.uk/acatalog/Toot ... chool.html

There is no blazer (rumour) but the jumper and dresses and skirts are rather bespoke and it all adds up to somewhere between £150-200...

[papinian]

And a question on St B: anyone know how they manage to have smaller class sizes? I know they are 1.5 FE but how do they manage the budget for more staff when they still (I presume) get funded per pupil. I've always wondered...

By spending money on proper teachers, not teaching assistants.

I apologise for repeating this on every thread where this comes up, but every study done shows that teaching assistants have no positive educational value and in fact can be more negative for children than having no teaching assistant at all.

Teaching assistants were a way for the Labour Party to create jobs for mothers that would fit with their children's school day. It was a massive job creation exercise at the taxpayer's expense. The Labour Party is now complaining about free schools being able to hire teachers who don't have teaching qualifications, while for a decade they were quite happy to have teaching outsourced to those who didn't even have A-levels, never mind a degree.

[LauraBrown]

Papinian: I almost hazarded a guess in the TA direction as obviously staff costs are such a big proportion of a primary budget, it's hard to see how they could save enough money elsewhere. However, parents these days are pretty accustomed to seeing that there is a teacher and TA in every class so I'd be interested in schools that were bold enough to say they did this and be clear about the reasons why... I also need to go away and understand more about the pros/cons/appropriate usage of TAs etc etc as it's not something I've looked into much apart from seeing your posts...

Erin: thanks for the link - I guess my friend must have misunderstood at the open day! I do like the dress but deffo a bit steep!

[Cloud]

Papinian, I am not querying your point about TAs, I am sure you are right about the fact that they don't add much value (although it must, surely, help a little with discipline when you have so many small kids in one class). However I don't know whether it's the answer to LauraBrown's question about budget allocation since tomsmum2008 mentioned earlier in the thread that St Boniface do have TAs in the smaller classes.

[LauraBrown]

Just wanted to round off on the tooting primary school uniform issue. It looks like this has been discussed on twitter by actual parents and all items can be bought in a supermarket apart from the pricey pinafore which needs to be bought from the shop linked to previously.

[tomsmum2008]

As well as very good budgeting on the schools behalf, the Parents Association does a brilliant job at fund raising. Only a few months ago they funded 40 odd ipads for the kids and had a few K left over!
They also help to subsidise school trips to make it more affordable to all kids!

Grant expenditure report:
http://www.connectedup.com/stboniface/page100.html

[asdfghjjkl]

Hello!

I may be a bit late to add my two cents to your process, but I would consider one more factor in ranking your schools.

Unless you know for certain that you are going private at the secondary level, then it is wise to bump the Catholic option up. If you do, your choices for secondary multiply, and some of the best secondary schools in the region are Catholic. It may seem like light years away, but trust me, you will be there soon!

The requirements for secondary Catholics are hurdles, and the best (London Oratory, Cardinal Vaughan, Sacred Heart, etc) are even tougher. They want to see evidence of a firm commitment to Catholic education.

My kids are at a local Catholic and I couldn't be happier...and even more so with the secondary options.

Best of luck!

[Cloud]

Thanks! We have applied to Catholic schools so fingers crossed we get our choices!

[oskemen9]

Does anyone have any experience - good or bad - with sacred heart high school in Hammersmith? I’m specifically curious about how your kids coped with the commute in Y7…thank you