INFANT reading results would improve by almost 10 per cent if the Government reduced average class sizes by eight pupils, Maria Iacovou of the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex claimed this week. She studied the test results of 11,000 sven-year-olds, and found that pupils in classes of 22 achieved around seven marks more out of 30 than those in classes of 30. Projected onto current national curriculum tests, this would mean that an extra 10 per cent of students would reach level 2 in reading.