CHAPTER 8 - The Average Class Size

Abstract

Most countries these days have a problem of rural depopulation, and schools in the affected areas suffer a progressive depletion of pupil numbers and, therefore, of staff. The ambition of administrators and the hope of teachers are to see a reduction in the average class size in schools. A tendency is to aim at some ideal average figure that is seen as an absolute, divorced from such factors as the sizes of schools and their age spans. This chapter presents a supposition where an authority with schools each and all in the region of a thousand pupils, aged 11–18, has set itself the target of an average of 25.5 pupils per class. There is virtually no end to the list of such questions that could be asked, and that could to an extent be answered by verbal reasoning. But the precise and definitive answers to them must surely wait on the formulation of equations and the codification of laws. It is on this basis only that school organization can be integrated into a subject that would be of benefit to schools and education in the same way as similar integrations of pure or disinterested study have secured advances in other organizational fields.