One of the key pieces of information about a school parents want is class size. In fact, one of the top reasons parents look at private or independent schools is to enrol their children in schools with smaller classes. There are all sorts of important insights to be gleaned from class size data, though, so it is worth pointing out that for the fourth straight year, the B.C. Ministry of Education has released their report on class size.
One of the uses of class size data is simple to measure school district’s success in meeting legislative requirements and so on; we can see in this report that in this way, B.C. has been very successful. And while everybody hopes for the smallest classes possible, it’s good to know that 99% of classrooms in B.C. have fewer than 32 students; those nightmare scenarios with 40 students in a room are not happening.
I found it interesting that class sizes increased as students got older, although dipped slightly for high school. This reflects policies for younger students as well as, perhaps, population trends. After all, some years get more births than others!
Another interesting finding is that for the youngest learners, K-3, it’s by far most likely for a classroom to have either no ESL/ESD students, or 4+ students per classroom. This sort of trend may point to neighbourhood demographics or point to efforts at diversity.
Perhaps most encouraging of all, the report card shows an increase in teaching assistants, over 2000 classes with 10 or fewer students and average class sizes ranging from about 18 to 25. The breakdown by school district also allows parents to investigate local differences.
Lastly, for B.C. parents consider public or private school, issues such as class size and composition can be investigated for the public schools through these data. That’s definitely a powerful tool.
