On Tuesday 16th June 2015, The Birmingham Mail newspaper issued a story about '7,000 primary school youngsters crammed into classes breaking legal limit'. The story included our school, Timberley Academy.

This story was run without the journalist contacting school. If they had taken the time to do this, we could have explained the situation.

The newspaper has issued the following statement: "Timberley Academy in Shard End has the largest average KS1 class sizes in the West Midlands, with 200 infants crammed into seven classes at an average of 32.9 in each".

We can confirm that our children are not crammed into classrooms and the Birmingham Mail have not taken into account that we are a Fully Accessible Mainstream School, with A Resource Base. Our overall class numbers, which were taken into consideration, include children who are in the resource base. When a school has a Resource Base, the Birmingham Local Authority create places above the usual numbers in a mainstream class.

The number of children we have at Timberley, does not affect the education of any child and we make it our priority for every child to be taught to the highest standard, in a happy, safe and comfortable environment.