A story about class size

What's the bet the Treasury official who wrote the report saying class size doesn't matter hasn't spent a lot of time inside a classroom lately. My son had a brilliant teacher in year 3 - but she didn't last. Class size was a problem.

Let's call her Ms Bishop (she's still teaching but in another city). Her class that year had around 30 eight-year-olds. Four had "challenges" - 1 ADHD, 1 developmental delays (with wealthy parents who let him do WHATEVER he wanted WHENEVER he wanted) and 2 Russian orphans - one very agressive, the other with a penchant for stealing and cutting things up.

I did parent help once a week that year. After an hour, I had to go home and have a lie down. Ms Bishop was DP and had an MA in education. She was a genuis. At first I thought my son wasn't going to make a lot of a progress that year. I changed my tune when he learned all his times tables in one term - she'd clicked how that boy worked.

She put herself on the line, and those kids thrived - every one of them in their own way. But the hours were huge and she neglected her own family (there was a teenage pregnancy). At the end of the year she resigned, and took a year or so out from the classroom. Last I heard she had a low-key job in a school in the South Island.

Class size does matter. Fortunately, there's been quite an outpouring against the Treasury advice - parents, teachers, academics in the MSM, blogs, etc. And some good research has seen the light of day refuting Treasury's claims (http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/about-massey/news/article.cfm?mnarticle_uuid=8B21828D-B8EB-7759-AF1B-5D21D93B49FF).

Maybe the tide's turned, and people are realising if we want to keep our high-performing education system we're going to have to fight to defend it. Fingers-crossed.