Class Size and Disaffected Young People

Before the institutionalization of education, learning took place in a variety of settings. The first and foremost of these was the family. The second was the workplace. Sometimes family and workplace were the same. In other instances young people left the family for service as servants, apprentices, in the armed services or merchant navy. One common feature of all of these sites of learning was that the ratio of 'teachers' to learners, of adults to children, was relatively high compared with the typical school, college or university classroom.

In a family there would be maybe two adults to around 7 or 8 surviving children. Apprentices were indentured to a single master or journeyman. Even in large scale organisations like the armed services training was on a smaller scale. Compare these ratios with the typical education setting where there may be 18 to 30 youngsters being educated by one or two adults and one gets an idea of how unnatural 'industrial scale' education is. The adult/youngster ratios are cetainly nothing like the ratios that apply in the upbringing of our primate cousins.

Now of course many young people, possibly the majority, thrive or at least make acceptable progress in formal education. Why do they succeed when the adult/younster ratios are so apparently unfavourable? Well perhaps it is because they have sound home relationships where they get the care, attention and support needed to help them to learn and thrive. However, there is a significant minority of young people for whom formal education is difficult to negotiate. They do not thrive. In both the early years and higher up the school, special nurture groups have been shown to be very effective at re-engaging these young people (see, for example, the success of initiatives in Glasgow at reducing the school exclusion statistics).

Perhaps we need to be less concerned about reducing the class size for the majority of well-supported children and young people but focus instead on having much smaller groups for youngsters who do not thrive in big classes.