Class sizes don't matter - it's the teaching that counts [dailymail.co.uk]
- Published: 26 October 2011
Britain's eternal debate about education concentrates on statistics and money. 'Resources' are measured and tabulated to within a decimal point, while the actual content of education - knowledge - is disregarded.
It's a strange phenomenon. When did you last hear an education 'specialist' - a schools' inspector at OFSTED or one of the army of local authority advisers - say anything interesting about Einstein's physics, Cromwell's army or Wordsworth's poetry? Technique and process take priority, and that results in dessication. 'Education' is now a subject in its own right, and in the process it has become strangely un-intellectual.
Class sizes are a case in point. Classes in Britain's primary schools - according to the official figures - are larger than anywhere else in Europe. If the numbers are over twenty-five to thirty per class alarm bells usually start ringing. Teachers' unions get hot under the collar, and solemn advisers urge a reduction in numbers.
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