Small schools?

[Ginger]

Just curious- was having a discussion with a friend about this today- would you send your child to a school that has 12 students total? Why/why not?
The school has one teacher and offers individualised learning plans for each student.

[Purple Penguin]

I went to a school like that and it was awesome, so yes I would, but that's just me.

[Phteven]

I went to a very small school. I hated it. Tanya Calkman (sp?) who was the headmaster's daughter was a bullying mean girl from hell and there was no escaping her. With such a small pool of students for her to torment we all got tormented. it didn't help that her father always helped out - she stole my book and wrote her name in it and then when I took it back she told her father and I got in told to return it to her
I guess it could have been good if Tanya had been kept locked in a cage.

[Rouge]

I wouldn't only because to me social skills are very important. And I don't think small schools are a good indication of how to cope with high school or university. Unless of course you are in a rural area iykwim?

I recently spoke to a friend who went to a small "alternative" school as a child. She said when she went to uni, she hated it. She had no idea about social interactions, found the structured learning hard to get to understand and so fourth. She still really struggles socially as a result.

[~Kim~]

Yes I would, but we were only considering it because of remoteness. I was then really concerned with keeping her out of school activities up so that she had a wider circle, not just the kids at school.
When I was a kid a couple of my friends went to a local school with only 15 kids and both of them went through high school/uni successfully, so I guess it does depend on the child. That was a regular state school though.

[Artechim]

DH and I have had this discussion many times.
The people that he knows that went to a small school for primary and then mainstream high school were really well balanced and confident people.
But my brother went to a small rural school, about 20 kids, and he got passed over. Not intentionally, but he memorized all the books on the first read and then repeated them by rote. By the time anyone realized that he wasn't actually reading he was nearly 9 and it took a lot of extra tutoring to catch him up. I attribute a lot of the problem to the teacher being spread between all year levels, so if a kid seems to be doing all right they got skipped for one that needed more help iykwim. But I guess that happens no matter what the size of the school.

There are two small schools with only a dozen children at each around here, but there is a teacher at MG that does a day a week at each of them and it seems that a lot of the kids that are going there that have behavioral issues. I would make sure I spent a decent amount of time there before enrolling to check out what the other kids were like because the smaller class size can be attractive for more challenging kids - you don't want them to be stuck with a Tanya Calkman.