Instructor:Student ratios

[AngelaG]

What are peoples thoughts on the numbers of students an instructor can effectively and safely deal with before the class needs to be split or another instructor helps out?

Think about it in terms of
Juniors
Teens
Adults

Does anyone know of any laws or guidelines on this?

In my old job as Activity Leader the policy was 10 Juniors per leader or 15 Teenagers.

[random]

www.thecpsu.org.uk/Scripts/content/Default.asp

Has some useful info.

[AngelaG]

Staff ratios
Staff/participant ratios should be based on the age of the children involved, the degree of risk the activity involves, and whether there are disability needs. The lower the age of the participants, the greater the need for supervision. If the activity is mixed gender, male and female staff should be available. Your sport's Governing Body will be able to give you specific guidance.

Hmm kind of vague.

[random]

Well it is a government thing, they never commit too much, they might get sued.

[Aefibird]

For Outdoor Educational Visits (a posh term for school trips!) my work uses a ratio of 1 adult to 6 children, but we usually have more adults present than that 'just in case'.

Plus, with SEN children the ratio needs to be higher anyway.

I'm not sure if this ratio is from government guidelines or if it is just one the school has established on its own.


(edited for typo's)

[pasmith]

One of my major pet hates is training sessions with adults AND children.
IMHO they should always be seperate classes.
If both are in the same class then both will be missing out in some way. You can't teach them the same things nor teach them in the same way.
I have painful memories of being taught TKD patterns by some jumped up little shit of a black belt that was fresh out of primary school.
I'd say that a good size class would be no more than about 16 people.

[andym]

We train with kids...it's awful! Luckily none of them are Black Belts!

[Aefibird]

Some kids are OK to train with, some are a menace and shouldn't be allowed out until they're at least 30.

I'm not a big fan of training with kids, but I can see why some clubs and instructors do it. For example, my club is so small that to have an adults-only class wouldn't really be economically viable, especially if that class were further sub-divided into 2 or more classes for lower grades and higher grades. It would effectively make each class a private lesson! lol

For a small club like mine I can see why Sensei doesn't run adults only classes. However, for larger dojos (both in terms of student numbers and in terms of physical training space) it is a better idea IMO to separate students according to age.

[miffersy]

Hi,
We Have 10 BB's besides myself not all train every session and around 40 Students who thankfully don't all turn up at the same time( The Dojo is full with 30 people in it.) so we normally end up with a good mix.

[Aefibird]

miffersy said:

Hi,
We Have 10 BB's besides myself not all train every session and around 40 Students who thankfully don't all turn up at the same time( The Dojo is full with 30 people in it.) so we normally end up with a good mix.

Same here. We have 44 registered members for my dojo, but you're lucky to be able to train properly if even half that number turn up. Thankfully there's enough classes for the members to be able to "spread out" over the week, so the dojo isn't permanently crowded (except maybe on Mondays) - plus, there's not 44 kids in the dojo at any one time, thank goodness!! lol

[pasmith]

I taught a little bit of groundfighting at my Karate class on Sunday (not that I'm much cop at it but I know more than anyone else there).
There was a kid there with his Dad.
It felt a little odd teaching people how to dislocate someone's arm with a 12 year old kid there.
As his Dad does Karate too I thought I'd leave it to him to tell his kid not to actually break people's arms in reality.

That to me is a perfect example of why kids and adults shouldn't train together.

Each needs different treatment to the other.
Teach an adult like you would a kid and you patronise them and miss out stuff that they should know.
Teach a kid like an adult and you'll bore them and turn them into a danger to others.

There's good reasons why adults go to adult education classes and not just sit in with a bunch of kids at school. I don't see why martial arts should be different.

Kids classes for kids adults classes for adults. The distinction between adults and kids is more distinct than the division between high grades and low grades (IMHO).

[Aefibird]

I do agree, it's just that it's not really practical (financially or otherwise) to have separate adults & juniors classes.

In an ideal world we would have that, but in an ideal world we'd have more than about 3 regular adult members.

[AngelaG]

We have seprate juniors/teens/adults lessons. It's a lot simpler to teach that way, without worrying that you are teaching little Timmy to snap someone's neck. There are open lessons as well if people do want to train in a mixed environment. I like to mix it up myself - some adults lessons and sometimes I like training with the kids.