Annotation: Class Size and the Quality of Educational Outcomes

Abstract

There has, over the last few years, been a keen and contentious debate surrounding the interpretation and implications of an inexorably upward trend in class sizes in Britain, focusing particularly on the primary sector. This has been played out against a backcloth of such diverse influences as the continued diminution in public sector spending, low teacher morale, changes in school management and budgeting incorporating a market approach to school enrolment, the enhanced role of parents in school governance, the publication of league tables, and disputes about differential funding of schools. Day, Tolley, Hadfield, Parkin, and Watling (1996) characterise the resultant polarisation of view as being between education pressure groups on the one hand and the government on the other, i.e. the “critical” versus the “official” view. However, this is probably too narrow a characterisation because all parties with a legitimate interest in education have been involved, from parents and teachers through to national pressure groups such as teacher unions and the National Commission on Education. Several independent surveys have been undertaken, which show both the wide consensus about the effect of increasing class sizes among these groups, and the strength with which they hold their views.