Opinion Piece from NZEI:
It would be foolhardy to dismiss the importance of smaller classes on the future of our education system, argues primary
school principal Ian Leckie.
Research published by Auckland University Professor John Hattie suggests that class size is largely irrelevant in
improving education systems and continuing to lower student-teacher ratios will have little or no impact on student
achievement.
In creating a table of the most effective ways to raise student achievement, he ranks the quality of student-teacher
interaction and feedback as the most significant.
There is nothing to say that Professor Hattie’s research is not interesting and thought provoking, but to suggest that
it is education’s answer to the Holy Grail, as some media have described, would be overstating it.
And for our own education minister Anne Tolley to say it will have a profound influence on the future of New Zealand
schooling, would be misguided.
The teachers’ union NZEI has pushed hard, alongside other sector organisations to bring ratios down. When schools go
back this year, ratios in new entrant classes will be down to 1:15 but there is still work to be done in Year 4-8
classes where ratios sit at 1:29.
To suggest that such work should be abandoned or undone seems to fly in the face of both commonsense and academic
evidence that deals specifically with class size.
In his book, “The Class Size Debate – is small better?” Professor Peter Blatchford from the University of London looked
comprehensively at how class size differences and teacher:student ratios affect student academic achievement. Among his
conclusions he said “there was consistent evidence that children in small classes were more likely to interact with
their teachers, there was more teaching on a one-to-one basis, more times when children were the focus of a teacher’s
attention, more teaching overall and more times when children were attending to the teacher and actively involved in
interactions with them (that is responding or initiating, rather than just attending).”
Surely smaller class size encourages the type of quality interaction and feedback between teacher and student which
Professor Hattie champions as a key to improving student outcomes.
Another of Professor Hattie’s conclusions is that rewarding good teachers through performance pay would be more
effective in terms of student learning, than reducing class sizes.
This begs a number of questions.
Why would students in one class have higher achievement levels just because their teacher is paid more than the teacher
in the classroom next door?
And how do you assess the teacher with a bright motivated group of students against another teacher who has a class with
several disruptive students? One teacher may in fact be putting in more effort and accomplishing more educationally, but
the other would receive more pay based on student outcomes.
Performance pay also sets up competition between teachers. Alfie Kohn, an American author who wrote a definitive study
on performance pay, says “the surest way to destroy cooperation and therefore organisational excellence is to force
people to compete for few rewards or recognition or rank them against each other.”
Getting the best out of teachers and students is a complex issue which needs a multi-faceted approach and sector-wide
discussions. There are no quick fix or Holy Grail type answers. It would be concerning to see one piece of research
determining the future direction of New Zealand’s educational policy.
**Ian Leckie is the Principal of Tahatai Coast School in Papamoa and the Vice President of NZEI
ENDS