Industry News
State school class size 'overwhelming'
Posted on 26th November 2007
Young children are being overwhelmed by the size of their schools, leading many parents to move them to independent schools, an expert has claimed.
Mary Tasker, the chairman of the educational charity Human Scale Education (HSE), made her comments in a letter to Beverley Hughes, children, young people and families' minister.
Research by the charity has shown the number of primary schools teaching more than 500 children has risen to 409, compared to 99 in 1986.
Meanwhile, the number of primary schools teaching fewer than 200 children has fallen to 7,729, from 11,432 in 1987, HSE reports.
Consequently, parents who can afford to remove their children from state education are doing so, claimed Ms Tasker.
"They prefer to send their children to small independent schools, which pride themselves on having classes at least half the size of those in many state primary schools," she explained.
According to the Class Size Research Project, a study partly funded by a grant from the Department for Children, Schools and Families, smaller classes benefit from greater individual teacher support.
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