Average Class Size - ICFP metrics

The size of any teaching group if all pupils are evenly distributed between all teaching groups led by a teacher within the timetable cycle.

Calculation

ACS?=?(total number of pupils x cycle) / total number of planned lessons.

Example: if there are 90 pupils, 25 lessons in the cycle and 75 planned teacher lessons on the timetable, the average class size is 30 pupils.

'Total number of pupils' means total pupils on roll at the point of analysis. 'Cycle' refers to the number of lessons taught across the timetable design eg 25 lessons over 5 days or 60 over 10 days etc. 'Total number of planned lessons' means all groups led by a teacher within the planned cycle. Often missed in the calculation are the intervention and SEND lessons including intervention groups, SEND support groups and alternative provisions. If these are led by teachers and providing education they must be included as they teacher are available to teach them. Although these 'support lessons' only have small numbers of learners extracted from the formal curriculum for alternative arrangements and so including them will drop the ACS, they have the capacity to be a full class if led by a teacher so can be aggregated along with all other classes to show the real impact.

Consider this:

This metric is often considered across a whole school as a marker of practice. In reality, the broader the range of year groups within one organisation, the more difficult this is to produce any usable comparison. Using a benchmark level for an all-through school (of which there are relatively few across the system) will be quite different from a 4-11 primary or an 11-16 secondary school. The use of this metric should be undertaken with care if being used to compare practice between schools. To use it to drive curriculum design is often focussed on the narrative of championing smaller class sizes.

In using?Average Class Size?there are three elements to consider: The phase specific issues, the impact on decision making in designing curriculum and what the research tells us about class size and the common narrative.

1. The average class size across the key stages decreases as the learners get older. The understanding of a class being 30 pupils on entering education at 4 years old is well embedded in our narrative about schools - 'forms?of entry' are clearly understood. Up to the age of 14 these are reasonable expectations, even with the reduced class sizes in practical subjects the average is maintained at above 27 across the first three key stages. At key stage 4 there is a common belief that class sizes will reduce and further still at KS5, post 16 education. Thinking about the level of independence of learners over this journey it does seem counter intuitive that the more independent the learners become the smaller we expect the groups to be. This alone should prompt an examination of our funding systems to perhaps increase the primary phase funding should reverse this expectation in reducing class sizes earlier in school life.
2. Consider the impact on the personalisation of curriculum. The narrative is often about the number of choices or options learners have access to apart form common or core curriculum offered to all. The choices are arranged into silos or blocks which provide for a whole year group to select what they want to study. The breadth of these choices are often driven by an understanding of what school can afford to offer. Consider Music which is often referred to as attracting typically an average of 6% of any population. If this is typical then a larger school with a population of 240 is likely to see 12-15 learners choose music, a school with 120 on roll will see no more than 6 or 7. If you operate a threshold policy, "a course can only run if it achieves 15 learners" then in the smaller school it will likely never achieve a viable number, however if the average is considered and this is the only small group in a year group that typically has classes of 28-30 for most subjects then the average class size is likely to be within the threshold of acceptable. Breadth maintained.
3. It is clear that the research suggests that when we talk about reducing class size the levels of change from 30 to 25 have little impact, although it is fair to say the research is still thin on the ground. It is however clear that where the reduction in average class size would make a difference is in the primary phase, early on. It seems that this simply reinforces the point made above, reducing class sizes in the older year groups is not about increasing results. It would make an impact if we were able to do it earlier in each child's learning experience.

In terms of average class size within the?SMARTcurriculum? analysis we base the enhancement on 30 learners in a KS1 or 2 class, 27 in KS3 and 4 and 17 at KS5. Enhancement is seen where the target average class size is lower than this caused by the investment in more classes or there are less learners in the year group. Provision or roll are the main impactors.

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