Teaching in Large and Small Classes

Abstract

In many countries over the world there has been a hotly contested and widely reported debate over the educational consequences of class size differences. Opinions vary from those academics and policy makers who argue that class size reduction is not cost effective to those who argue that it should be a cornerstone of educational policy. Despite the debate, there is general agreement, from both experimental (e.g., Finn & Achilles, 1999) and naturalistic studies (Blatchford, Bassett, Goldstein, & Martin, 2003), that smaller classes have positive effects on pupil academic performance, if introduced immediately after school entry, that is, with the youngest children in school.