Importance of Health and Well-being in Children

Should public funding be spent on reducing class sizes?

Class sizes is “PTRs (Pupil to teacher ratio) are calculated by dividing the number of pupils on a school’s roll by the full-time qualified staff, not including short-term cover or staff that have been absent for a term or more”. Blatchford (2007). Class sizes is big topic of discussion at the moment within education because a lot of people within the education sector believe that class sizes has an effect on the learning of pupils. It is believed that smaller classes lead to better academic performance which is why the Welsh government are funding for smaller class sizes, a new policy Is being introduced in Wales to spend £36 Million to reduce class sizes as Kirsty Williams states that there will be 80 new teachers in schools that need extra support. (Welsh Government, 2019), however it is also argued that funding smaller class sizes is a waste of money and should be spent on better quality of teachers as Dobbelsteen (2002) puts forward that it is the quality of teaching and that a good teacher will adjust and teach all ranges of class sizes. Throughout this essay I will talking about the pros and cons of both small and big class sizes and the different opinions of theorist and educators. 

It is believed that small class sizes have a positive effect on pupils learning. If children are in smaller class’s then they have more opportunity to ask questions and also expand their learning by being able to question what they are being taught which will enhance children’s critical thinking. The teacher will also have time to be able to give every pupil attention to answer the pupil’s questions and critical thinking. McKeachie (1990) pointed out this point as it was stated that “classroom interaction could nurture students’ critical thinking and higher order learning, which, in turn, would enhance their academic performance and intellectual development.”. Being a teacher of a smaller class size meant that the teacher will actually have more time to mark their pupil’s work in greater detail which is important as children will tend to learn a lot more from their mistakes, also the teacher will have more time to plan detailed lesson plans which will make teaching more structured and time managed which is vital especially teaching class’s at foundation phase as they need more structure and time to understand learning. Nut (2017) also suggests that having big classes looks unattractive to both parents and teachers because a parent will not want to send their child to a school with big classes as they know that their child will not get the attention from the teacher that they may need, also Nut believe that it is unattractive to teachers that are well qualified as they know they will have a higher work load which is one of the main reasons why teachers actually leave the profession. There are actual schemes called CSR (Class reducation schemes) that are put in place all around the world in places like California where they are the largest CSR scheme to reduce class sizes across the United States. Bohrnstedt et al (2000). 

Even-though small class sizes have many benefits to improving learning, it however has its faults because there are many variables that comes into pupil’s learning and academic performance, so it is not nesscarily just down to class size being a problem. (John Hattie, 2009, p122) completed research that ended up finding out that small class sizes had little effect on children’s learning and it is not worth spending all of this funding on. Additionally, looking at the PISA rankings, it has been shown that Luexmbourg for example has reduced their class sizes in hope that it will help them move up the PISA rankings, although South Korea is still above Luexmbourg even after Luexmbourg reduced their class sizes, South korea on the other hand have not reduced their class sizes, they have after school and tutoring schemes put in place to enhance children’s learning, so this shows that reducing class sizes is not the only solution to enhancing children’s academic performance. Ripley (2013). From completing a 40 hour placement in Pentrepoeth Primary school where they have 30 pupil’s to a class which is regarded as a big class, I discovered that even though the school had big classes they were still achieving high academic performance. I saw in the foundation phase that they used a teaching literacy programme called “Read, Write, Inc” which is “structured and systematic approach to teaching literacy. It is used by more than a quarter of the UK's primary schools and is designed to create fluent readers, confident speakers and willing writers.” Miskin (2019), this programme in Pentrepoeth split the children into small groups organised by ability throughout year 1 to year 2, this means that even though the children were in a big year group class, they were constantly being put into small groups for different subjects throughout their learning and this was done by using Teaching Assisstants as well as the main teacher, this backs up the opinion of Blatchford (2012) who suggests that “Quality of the teachers and teaching is more important”, so funding teachers training and teacher assisstants instead of small class sizes is viewed as the better way to spend public money.