Class sizes

Posted by bigjimmy

Why don’t we hear about reducing class sizes any more? Recession? Curriculum for Excellence? Remember when . reducing class sizes was the next big thing?

Posted by belimcfall

Because there’s no money and councils have bigger problems right now. Speaking as an English teacher, class sizes in S12 have been reduced, so job done for secondaries. There are whispers that they might take it all away, however. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, and we take 30 in every other year, but it makes life much easier, and you get a chance to pull up those who are struggling because numbers are more manageable.

Posted by airy

Whispers? As soon as the SNP came in, they changed that commitment to something more like wishful thinking! In many areas S12 class sizes for English and maths have been nearer 30 for a couple of years! I had a correspondence with Holyrood on that matter and they justified it at the time by saying their commitment was to smaller class sizes at primary . what happened with that again?

Posted by jezzahill

Our council is looking at increasing class sizes in S56 science to 30 by farming the practical aspects out to the local college. With many science teachers due to retire in the next two years, they’ll save money by not replacing them but then go and spend money placing pupils at college. I don’t mean to upset anyone, but why are schools still spending money on subjects like drama? Surely we should be setting priorities nationally on STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) to help get industry back up and running in this country.

Posted by Dominie

I’d be interested to know more about your LA’s plans. I can’t see them being acceptable to parents, students or the teaching unions in your LA. As to your “beggar my neighbour” ideas about drama, our students deserve a balanced curriculum and if we start going down that road, we’ll simply delight those who want to play teachers off against each other. Some bureaucratspoliticians would be only too happy to dump one or more science subjects or one or more modern languages, or business education subjects or CDT subjects, for similar reasons. Yes, we need to get industry back on its feet, but drama teaches self-confidence and presentation skills, and successful engineers need those skills too.

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