The Importance Of Classroom Size For Learning

Overcrowded classes cause teachers to waste time imposing order, harm the most disadvantaged students and make it difficult to individualize teaching.

Many public schools slightly exceed the charter school average with 22 students per class in Primary and 25 in Secondary. The situation has worsened in recent years in conventional public schools due to the lack of teachers.

It is hardly talked about, but it is what affects the day to day in class the most. How many students are in a classroom or how many people does a teacher have to deal with every hour? Although it is the most visible part of this quantitative variable, it is not the only one. There are others, less obvious, but also important: how many exams the teacher has to correct or how many families he/she has to interact with within each classroom? The ratios determine how far the attention to the students can be individualized.

Classroom size matters, and not only in the performance of the students, but also in the course of the class itself or in educational spending. Smaller classes can benefit specific groups of students, such as those from disadvantaged backgrounds. And this is where Village high school excels as the size of the classrooms is smaller.

The Importance Of Individual Attention

The teachers who are in the classrooms every day confirm these impressions and go further. The number of students is one of the most important things since it is the way to get the most individualized attention possible for each student.

For many teachers, the reasonable maximum is 18-20 and the optimum is 14-15. If you have the students divided into performance groups, you can focus on the one with the lowest performance and the other will work alone. With three groups, this task is complicated. And if there are students with special educational needs in the class, the previous assertion increases its validity and importance.

Beyond this, larger class sizes appear to be associated with a higher percentage of students with behavior problems and the need to spend more time maintaining order, rather than teaching and learning.

It is known that in countries with fewer students in each class (such as Latvia or Estonia, with almost 15 students), teachers spend almost 85% of the time teaching and learning, while in those with the most (classes around 35 students), this percentage falls below 75%.

In a clear correlation, in schools with the most overcrowded classrooms, 15% of the time is spent in maintaining order in class, while those with the fewest students do not reach 10% of the minutes invested in this task.

Also, it's not just about the class hours themselves. More students mean more exams to correct and, above all, more families to attend to during the course. Again, more time is dedicated to bureaucracy and subtracted from purely academic tasks that limit the individualization of teaching that experts point to as the way forward.

However, reducing the number of students per classroom requires more physical classes and more teachers. The part of the teachers can more or less be undertaken; it is a matter of money.

What Does The OECD Say On This Issue?

One of the organizations that have studied how it affects the number of students in class is the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which has investigated how the number of students per class varies in the world and how this affects their learning.

According to this organization, the number of students is not the only variable that would improve the quality of education, they also mention the number of student’s classes hours, the number of hours that teachers work and their salary, such as key variables to control spending and quality of education.


Also, according to the OECD, the reduction of between 7 and 10 students per classroom at an early age have positive long-term effects. The reduction in the number of students is also noticeable especially with teachers with little experience and in classes in which there are students with behavior problems, mainly because by reducing the number of students gives the teacher the opportunity to better help those students who they needed it the most.

At elementary School Show Low we can notice the positive impact that students have assisting in a small classroom size.

Do you have questions? Please contact us! We are glad to share more details with you.  

Location: Show Low, AZ 85901, USA

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ethical values in education

Image
  At our institution, we believe that educating goes far beyond imparting academic knowledge. Therefore, we instruct our students based on a series of ethical values in order to not only create better students, but also good people. We invite you to review with us, what are the ethical values   in education and how they can influence the academic training of our students.   Responsibility Teaching a child to fulfill her/his duties at home is essential to make him/her a responsible adult. However, in school responsibility must be a value imparted so that students learn about its importance, as well as the consequence of their actions, be they good or bad.   Respect Respect begins when adults address children in the same way that they are expected to address others. That the child knows the rules and limits that must be respected is the beginning of the necessary moral process, i. e., distinguishing good and bad, yes from no, what he/she should and what he/she should not do, and act acco
Read more

The 5 qualities that every early childhood educator should have

Image
The figure of the early childhood educator is, in many cases, the first person that the boy or girl will contact outside of their family safety zone. Hence, one of the most important skills of these professionals is trust and affection, i. e., promote rapprochement through a friendly treatment, especially during the period of adaptation of the boy or girl to their new didactic environment. For the correct educational intervention and the accurate social attention to children and the family, educators must have the following five essential qualities: 1.- Empathy One of the qualities that can benefit the educator the most in the performance of his/her work is to be a close and understanding person, capable of understanding the little ones. The empathic attitude must be established with students, parents and the rest of the team with which she/he must work in coordination.  Establishing a close and tolerant relationship with children will help them adopt these values ​​and learn the impor
Read more

The importance of learning while playing at Eastmark high school

Image
  It can be ensured that the fundamental activity of the child is the game; it is essential for proper development, so the child must have enough time and space for it according to their age and play needs. In the game, the child involves all of her/his being (feelings, thoughts...), her/his practice serves to demonstrate and affirm her/his personality. He/she is totally absorbed in what for him/her is a serious activity. Psychologically, it is considered that on some occasions it has a cathartic function, since it can serve to release tension. Situations of everyday life are reproduced in the game, some of which may cause conflicts; then the child transfers them to his/her playful terrain and reaches the outcome that he/she would like in reality. The same type of game is different in each child, since it is not only determined by external conditions, but also by individual characteristics, which give it a particular stamp. The game allows three basic functions of psychic maturation: T
Read more