Big differences in class sizes matter, not small differences

Stuff reports:

Teachers and education experts say the Government’s plan to reduce the funded teacher to student ratio for years 4 to 8 by one will have little impact.

On Monday, Education Minister Jan Tinetti​ announced plans to change the class size funding, allowing them to reduce the ratio from one teacher for every 29 students to 1 to 28.

So few students are even attending school, the actual class size on any day will be far less than what a school is funded for.

But even putting that aside, the Hattie analysis of over 1,200 studies of education impacts found that class size changes have a minor impact.

See if you can find class sizes there.

A class with a size of 15 vs a size of 30 will have an impact on children’s learning. But a size of 28 vs 29 is really going to have minuscule impact.