Dani Garavelli: Class size isn't everything

Published on Saturday 26 September 2009 20:49

WHEN my youngest son took his first, faltering steps into the world of formal education last month, so many five-year-olds were due to pass through the gates that the school had to stagger the start times.

Like many East Renfrewshire schools, the primary he attends is bursting at the seams. With more than 650 pupils on the roll, the playground is a teeming mass of scuffed shoes and muddy blazers and hometime is a military operation, with teachers leading successive lines of children on to a line of waiting buses. So common is it for people to lie to get their children into this and neighbouring schools, the local authority requires no fewer than four documents as proof of residency and guardianship. House prices in the area have been inflated and placement requests continue to pour in.

So what is it that's attracting parents to these primaries? Well, it's certainly not the small classes. Each of the four primary ones in my son's school has at least 28 pupils – that's 10 more than the SNP's target of 18 in P1 to 3 and three more than the 25 that the party last week said it planned to make the legal limit for P1s.

And therein lies the obvious flaw in the SNP's flagship education policy. If parents are really so concerned about smaller classes, then why are so many of them hellbent on getting their children into schools which, by dint of their very popularity, are unable to provide them?

It's like anything else, I guess. If you ask 100 people if smaller classes are better than bigger ones, most will say yes. But ask them to place the issue on a league table of educational priorities and they may put it well down – after well-maintained buildings, decent equipment, dedicated teachers and evidence of high achievement. What parents want is the best education for their children and there is little to no evidence that reducing class sizes will provide it.

Of course, one of the reasons the SNP (and Labour) is so fond of this policy is that many of those who send their children to independent schools cite smaller classes as the reason they go private – and it's easy to see why they are so convinced.

They look at the amount of one-to-one contact the pupils get, and their high levels of attainment, and assume the two are connected, although the results achieved by private schools are likely to have more to do with affluence, parental support and the expulsion of disruptive pupils than it has to do with the higher pupil-to-teacher ratio.

Earlier this year, the EIS threatened to strike if action was not taken on class sizes, but talk to individual teachers and you get a more mixed response. Admittedly, smaller class sizes would create jobs for the many newly qualified teachers who are currently unemployed. But not everyone in education is convinced they are the be-all and end-all, with some claiming too few pupils can stifle competition and slow down learning.

Such research as there is suggests smaller classes may bring marginal benefits for pupils in P1-3, but have no impact at all from P3 onwards. The most comprehensive UK study to date, by London University's Institute of Education, found low-achievers gained most in those early years, concluding that a drop in class size from 25 to 15 could lead to "a gain in literacy of about one year's achievement for the bottom 25 per cent".

These benefits, however, have to be set against other pressures on the education budget. Cutting P1-3 classes to 18 across the country – which the SNP insists is still its target – would cost 360 million, according to the Association of Directors of Education. Yet, at present, many local authorities are struggling to make repairs to crumbling buildings, never mind having to find money for extra teachers.

The decision to cap P1 classes at 25 would not be so costly – particularly as the point of it is to stop parents taking legal action to force already crowded schools to accept their placement requests (thus diverting them back to their local primaries which may well be under-capacity). But it still has financial implications for those schools that have problems accommodating an influx of children in their own catchment. This is a particular issue in places where the presence of "good" schools has led to a flurry of new housing developments. Those primaries will need not only extra teachers, but quite possibly extra classrooms, which means extensions taking already limited playground space.

The fixation with smaller classes also means more emphasis is being placed on the quantity than the quality of teachers, as political scientist and former Labour adviser John McLaren, of Glasgow University, recently pointed out. Yet an inspirational teacher is likely to get more from a class of 30 than a lacklustre one with a smaller class.

With all this in mind, is it not about time the SNP and Labour stopped bickering over whether or not the decision to introduce the 25-pupil cap on P1s means the nationalists have "abandoned" their manifesto pledge, and look at whether an alternative to the current one-size-fits-all approach might be a better and more cost-effective way forward?

Instead of wasting money on cutting class sizes in areas where the impact on children's learning will be minimal, why not target resources to schools with the highest levels of deprivation? If the research from London University's IoE is right, reducing class sizes in the most troubled schools to 18 – while leaving schools in better areas as they are – would have much more impact on overall achievement than the SNP's current policy. And if that leaves my child in a class of 28, then so be it. Personally, I'm far more concerned about what he's being taught and by whom than how many other children share his classroom.