Class Sizes

Something for everyone in this report from the OECD.

Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "While Britain has now achieved the average spent on education by industrialised countries there is much more to do.

Of course, a union leader is going to call for more spending...but OK, we're spending the OECD average.

Class sizes in Britain are among the highest in the developed world despite huge increases in education spending, an international study reported yesterday.

Despite the average level of spending, we've still got large class sizes. So one group of people can go off and point out that clearly, it's not how much money, but how it's spent. Perhaps too much of it is getting caught up in the bureaucracy, not enough actually reaching the front line (a favourite point of mine of course)?

Only six other countries - Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Brazil, Chile and Israel - have more children in primary school lessons, it was disclosed.

However, another point does arise. I've not heard that the schools in Israel or Japan, for example, are terribly bad, despite their having larger class sizes. Indeed, on things like literacy etc, I've heard that they're rather good. So class size, at the primary level, might not actually be a good indicator of a good or bad system.

But then the OECD, contrary to pupular belief, doesn't always pick up particularly good objective measures.  You might recall that in their survey of where was and where was not a tax haven, the UK was one and Monaco was not. By their, objective, measure.