Is bigger better?

The Daily Telegraph reported earlier this week, that the number of pupils studying in schools with more than 1,500 on their rolls had increased very rapidly under Zanulabour.

In fact the number attending these schools had increased from 230,66o in 1997 to 493,120 in 2007. This was revealed in a parliamentary answer to a question raised by the Tories. Schools with more than 2,000 pupils increased from just 6 in 1997 to 25 in 2007, and those with 1,500 to 1,999 increased from 132 to 263.

Earlier this year plans were produced for a school in Nottingham to accommodate 3,5000 pupils.

The reasons for these changes include, among others, licence given to successful schools to expand and also merging schools when one or both/all have empty classrooms or spaces, or poor staff-student ratios.


Should we be worried?

Parents seem to favour smaller schools, as less daunting for pupils, more personal in scale and more conducive to study and learning. American evidence suggests that exam performance is better in smaller schools.

There is evidence that behavioual difficulties are more likely in very large schools, because head teachers find it impossible to know all pupils. There is strong evidence that expulsions are proportionately higher, indeed that they declining in smaller schools and increasing in larger ones.

Is it inevitable? In a word, "Yes!" Even in the absence of adjustments because of declining numbers in some catchment areas or schools, and the "need" to merge schools because staff-student ratios are inefficient, the nature of education, especially at the secondary level, indicates that schools will become larger.

The commitment to comprehensive education, supported by the Labour party, and tacitly by the Conservatives in advocating academies, means that each secondary school will need to cater for all abilities and all interests.

Many large comprehensives are already having to hold classes outside the normal teaching day because the number of timetable slots in a week does not permit a full timetable with perhaps as many as 15 subjects in a year, and students being in different ability levels in their various subjects. Alternatively students may be required to travel to other schools to take subjects which cannot be offered ato them at their own school.

The raising of the school leaving age to 18, which is in the pipeline, and the addition of extra qualifications such as diplomas on top of academic qualifications and other vocational qualifications, will reinforce the tendency.

What is happening in some schools is that horizontal divisions are being made. Some were made specialised sixth form colleges, although this may be reversed with the school leaving age being raised. In other situations horizontal divisions are practiced, with upper, middle and lower schools under one roof or on different campuses.

Schools are rightly trying to cater for students of different abilities by vertical streaming, which has probably contributed to larger schools and will continue to do so with more subjects at more levels and qualifications.

The reason for the apparent greater success of grammar schools, against which all but parents seem to have turned, could well be their usually smaller size and greater homogeneity. The logical conclusion to some is that separation is the solutions to all the problems of size, but "selection" is the evil word. This may be because in the past selection was undertaken by a test or tests in the final year of junior school. This does not have to be the case. The Germans have operated a selective educational system that is not bi-polar as it was here. They have used weighted results of achievements throughout the junior school, rather than the single pass-or-fail eleven plus we used.