Aimee Tinkler is becoming a rarity. There used to be tens of thousands of teachers working in schools such as hers across the UK. But the head of school at Carsington and Hopton Primary School, in rural Derbyshire, is now one of very few teaching professionals in England who can claim to work in a small school.

The school has 28 pupils on roll, from Reception to Year 6. There are seven staff, of which Tinkler and a colleague are the full-time teachers. “Between us, we teach all of the children,” Tinkler explains.

Every academic year brings new challenges for small schools. Budgets get tighter, costs get higher and economics of scale make competing with bigger schools more difficult. That has a knock-on effect on the small schools’ ability to attract pupils and, ultimately, many of them are closing.

In England, small schools are fighting the tide of the government’s preference for academisation and multi-academy trusts (MATs). And then there’s the pandemic, which has highlighted just how difficult it is for a small school to manage with the few resources they have.

While these challenges are important to note, we also need to look at the positives. Small schools offer something unique, and the success of smaller-school models within the free-school movement is a sign that this uniqueness can bring numerous benefits and successful outcomes. Ultimately, could those factors be key to their future and arrest the decline in numbers?

That this decline exists is a certainty but specific numbers are difficult to attain. There is no official benchmark for the number of students that qualifies a setting as a small school, although 150 or fewer is a commonly quoted figure. Using this measure, there were just 3,475 small primary schools in England in 2018-19 and 48 small secondaries.

A 2019 parliamentary debate on small and village school funding used a metric of any school below 200 pupils and it was able to make a historical comparison of numbers of schools in this category that was stark. It was revealed that, in 1980, there were 11,464 small primary schools with fewer than 200 pupils but, in 2018, there were just 5,406.

Why are the numbers in England dropping so alarmingly?

As threats to small schools go, funding is a big one. Per-pupil funding is naturally low in these schools and so the “lump sum” that all schools receive is the primary income. On such tight budgets, the smallest tweaks to the funding formula - or to pupil premium calculations, as happened in January - can have big consequences.

In a November 2019 NAHT survey, 42 per cent of small school leaders said they were concerned, or very concerned, about the possibility of closure of their school, with 84 per cent citing lack of funding as the main reason for this.

Some small schools receive additional “sparsity” funding. But to qualify, schools have to have under a certain number of pupils and be over a two-mile threshold for the average distance from each pupil’s home postcode to their second nearest school.

In the NAHT survey, only 41 per cent of respondents were found to receive sparsity funding and, of those, the majority (84 per cent) said this was not enough to provide reasonable budget stability.

Perilous position

For this reason, small schools have been a “campaigning priority” for the NAHT for “a number of years” says its director of policy, James Bowen.

“Small schools are in a financially perilous position, and we are calling for better and more funding for small schools, even if they’re not sparse, because they bring a lot of positives to their local communities,” says Bowen.

He points out that the way sparsity is measured is under consultation at the moment. The Department for Education (DfE) is proposing that the average distance be measured as a journey by road rather than as the crow flies. This could mean that about 900 more schools would receive this funding. A £10,000 increase in the maximum sparsity funding available is also under discussion (from £45,000 to £55,000 for primary schools and from £70,000 to £80,000 for secondary schools).

(Since this article was published, the government has confirmed that both of these proposals will come into force in 2022-23.) 

That sounds positive but is unlikely to make a significant impact.

“We support the fact that the government is increasing the maximum funding available,” Bowen says. “But we still have concerns about those small schools that don’t meet the sparsity factor, who rely entirely on the lump sum.

“And a big thing for us is that they’re not increasing the quantity, they’re not changing the overall amount of funding going into schools - they’re looking at distributing it differently. We would argue that it shouldn’t be a zero-sum game. If the cake isn’t big enough to start with, it doesn’t really matter how you slice it up, it’s still not enough to go around.”

Until these problems are solved, more small schools are likely to close.

But, according to Tinkler, there is another problem that small schools face: the DfE often seems to forget that they exist. She gives the example of education secretary Gavin Williamson’s remote learning proclamation that live lessons were “the gold standard”.

“He obviously had no idea in his head that a live lesson in our school could involve children who are 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 all at once, and that it would have been impossible [to deliver only live lessons],” she says.

“When the DfE sends out guidance, often it feels quite secondary focused and primary people feel affronted because of that. But it is never, ever considering small schools. And so we have to just do the best we can.”

The government did make specific mention of small schools in its controversial 2016 White Paper, Education Excellence Everywhere, in which Nicky Morgan, who was then education secretary, proposed that “apart from in exceptional circumstances, the smallest schools will have to form or join a [multi-academy trust]”, arguing that this would enable them to “call on the expertise of the MAT for better governance and back-office arrangements, and to increase and improve the breadth of their curriculum and extracurricular activities”.

The bill was eventually dropped after significant backlash, primarily against the plan to force all state schools to become academies, although Williamson’s unveiling of new policies in April around increasing the number of schools in MATs appeared to confirm that this is still very much the government’s vision.

(Since this article was published, the Schools White Paper reinforced the government’s commitment that every school should be in or on its way into a multi-academy trust by 2030.)

However, while that may be the intention, small schools aren’t proving an attractive proposition for MATs, according to Barbara Taylor, secretary of the National Association of Small Schools - and that is also limiting their capability to thrive in the current system.

“We deal with small schools facing closure,” she says. “We dealt with one that had gone into an academy chain and, in six months, the academy chain decided it wanted to close the school because it wasn’t big enough to give them enough money.”

Gemma Hitch, headteacher of Laddingford St Mary’s CofE Primary School in Kent (which has 74 students on roll), says that this is a familiar anecdote. She certainly has not found that MATs have been clamouring to take her school on.

“Finance is a challenge but we haven’t really experienced pressure [to join a MAT],” she says. “It comes up at different times, but one of the challenges for really small schools is that MATs aren’t particularly keen to take us on.”

A challenge, yes, but one that small schools are relieved about.

“We’re quite happy with that,” says Hitch.

The fear is that joining a MAT would mean sacrificing those elements that make small schools such an attractive place to work in the first place.

So, how are those small schools that do still exist fighting all these challenges?

Many have found a route into greater security through the creation of federations or more informal alliances. Such alliances can offer them the financial support they need without having to give up what makes them special.

Tinkler’s school is part of a federation with two other small schools in the local authority. The three schools all share an executive head, which brings benefits to the schools’ finance spreadsheets and beyond, she says.

“In small schools, the budget is so tight that if you share a headship, not only do you get to share expertise but you also get to spread the cost of the executive head salary,” she explains.

“It also means you get a much bigger teaching team whereas, if you’re a tiny school, you maybe have just two teachers. We have the equivalent of six full-time teachers [between the three schools] so that’s quite important for teacher development and sharing workload.”

Similarly, Hitch has found strength in small school numbers.

“We’re not in a federation but we do work really closely with other schools around us,” says Hitch. “I think that’s really important because we have shared issues - the good and the bad - and we understand what it is to be a small school.

“But it also allows us to maintain our individuality. It’s about working together and helping each other, and still being able to have an individualised response to your particular community.”

Another opportunity comes from using the small school uniqueness as a selling point: to parents, to government and to other schools. If small schools can persuade parents that the pluses of small schools outweigh the challenges, if they can persuade government that they can be a “systems leader” on pedagogy and wellbeing, and if they can persuade other schools to spend money getting small school teachers to deliver continuing professional development (CPD) in the areas where small schools excel, then there is hope that the decline in numbers will reverse.

For example, the government in England is currently having a huge push on family engagement and wellbeing - areas in which small schools excel.

In the 2019 parliamentary debate, DUP politician Paul Girvan explained that tiny schools can be “the heart of a village, holding it together”.

“If the school closes, the village effectively dies,” he said. “People do not want to move there because there is no school. They are vital to keeping communities alive. We might save money in the short term but in the long term, it will cost more.”

Conservative MP Robert Courts agreed, describing small schools as “the centre of the community. It might have been where our parents, our grandparents or we ourselves went to school, and it may be where our children go. It is a crucial way to build links with the local community.”

The first UK lockdown, in March 2020, offered a clear illustration of just how valuable small schools’ prominent position within their communities can be.

Whereas some larger schools struggled to manage the remote engagement with so many families, Tinkler says the smaller scale of her school meant she and her team were aware of what each family was going through, and were able to offer the right support as a result.

“We know that our families felt very supported during the lockdown,” she says. “We were in contact with all of them the whole way through. We could have real, focused contact with the ones who were struggling and, for the ones who didn’t need us - who were happy to get on with it - we just checked in with them to see if everything was OK.

“We have heard of some bigger schools that had tricky issues with parents during home learning, but we did a survey and the responses were overwhelmingly positive. In fact, there wasn’t a single negative comment, and I think that’s because we already had a very open dialogue with our parents.”

Likewise, Hitch had a similar experience of supporting the families of her students.

“During the pandemic, I felt really confident that we were meeting the needs of all of our children and their families,” she says. “But that’s because there are 74 of them and I know them all. As a staff team, we know what their needs are and we know what’s going on at home - we’ve been able to meet them where they’re at.”

It’s simple maths to understand how smaller schools find this family engagement easier: just as in primary, teachers tend to know children and their families better than in secondary because there are fewer children to know. In small schools, that number is distilled even further. This is a big draw for parents but it could also have appeal for a government wanting to please parents and also for other schools looking to make wellbeing gains.

Small schools, big impact

There have already been lessons learned from small schools in this respect. Some secondaries have adopted schools within schools. In this model, large secondaries are broken into smaller “mini school” units with vertical tutor groups, so that the heads of each school are able to have much closer relationships with pupils and their parents.

It seems clear that there are further takeaways here, too: the wellbeing and engagement advantage of small schools is unlikely to be just about the number of pupils but about attitudes, policies and role allocation. Having staff work across safeguarding, pastoral and even catering (Tinkler has been known to be a lunchtime supervisor) enables a truly holistic view of the child. Furthermore, there is less complexity from the parents’ point of view in terms of who to talk to: school is less intimidating and easier to navigate.

Teaching and learning is another area where the uniqueness of small schools can appeal to parents, impress government and be a source of CPD for other schools.

According to Courts, what often makes small schools so successful is their “nurturing and caring nature, and the amount of attention that individual schools can give [each pupil]”.

That individual attention is certainly something students at Tinkler’s school - where they may have the same teacher for three or four years - get to experience.

“I know everything about what makes them tick and how to motivate them,” she says. “I know every single child in our school; who gets their bs and ds the wrong way round. We know the children like that and we know our parents. And we can do that because we have so few families.”

While staff-pupil ratios are difficult to replicate in larger schools, the processes and policies that provide a framework for those relationships may be invaluable to other schools.

Another thing that makes teaching in a small school unique is the breadth of curriculum knowledge you need to have, adds Tinkler - and, as we know, curriculum is a huge focus of Ofsted and the government.

“Where a teacher in a bigger school might be just delivering to one year group, in a tiny school, you can’t just know the curriculum of one year. In my class at the moment, I have Reception, Year 1, 2 and 3 all together, so I have to be an expert at all of that and to be able to deliver the whole curriculum.”

It takes “a huge amount of flexibility”, she explains, and a whole lot of planning, to “essentially deliver three different lessons in one lesson”.

“[In a typical lesson], I would have perhaps planned something to have my teaching assistant deliver to Reception, then I’d have planned another lesson for the Years 1-2 group, and I would deliver that while Years 2-3 do something else - probably the work that went with yesterday’s lesson.”

While the workload this approach generates is inevitably huge, having to teach several years at once also comes with pedagogical benefits. It can encourage staff to make explicit links across stages and forces teachers to teach in a more joined-up way.

In the current system, such curriculum experience and knowledge is a commodity that the government would want to publicise and other schools may want to invest in.

Of course, small schools should not have to beg for help, nor sell their wares to others, in order for them to survive in England. Parents want choice and small schools are a key part of the offer that should be available.

The fact is, though, that these schools are under more pressure than ever before, so shouting about what they are doing well and becoming sector leaders in the areas they excel at will surely be a useful addition to the funding negotiations. Together, these aspects will hopefully see the number of small schools grow, not diminish further.

Zofia Niemtus is interim deputy commissioning editor for Tes

This article originally appeared in the 4 June 2021 issue under the headline “Small wonders”