marvellous job - with observers coming away inspired by the quality of teaching and
children's educational experiences. In these classrooms teachers were taking full
advantage of the extra opportunities for individual, focused and sustained attention
provided by small classes. The benefits of having fewer children will not necessarily
follow. Teachers have to work just as hard to manage learning effectively.
Other contexts for learning - group work
One danger that should be warned against is to see all the benefits of smaller classes in
terms of increased opportunities for individualised teaching. We need to be careful not to
overlook the benefits that can stem from other contexts for learning. In particular there is
no guarantee that smaller classes will automatically lead to more productive work in
groups. We found that there was if anything less cooperative group work in smaller
classes and that teachers did not seem to recognise the possible benefits of smaller
classes for more productive group work (Blatchford, in press,a). There may be particular
implications here for teachers in larger classes. We have seen that pupils are likely to
interact more with each other in larger classes, and one way teachers might make the
most of large classes is to consider helping the children toward effective group work.
However, in parallel research we have found, at both primary and secondary school
stages, that teachers had little faith in students’ abilities to work in groups, and groups
were not set up or prepared with a clear educational purpose. Students themselves
were worried about working in groups (Blatchford, Kutnick, Clark, Macintyre and
Baines, 2002). We argue that groups within the class should be considered not just in
terms of increasing teacher attention to pupils, but in terms of taking seriously pupil self-
directed group work in classes. A teacher need not be a ‘sage on the stage’ at all times.
Even in small classes she can afford to be a ‘guide on the side’!
One implication of our results, also suggested by Galton et al (1996) is the value in
designing teacher training programmes, both initial and continuing, which consider
ways of adjusting productively to contextual features like class size. It is not, as some
imply, a case of either supporting teacher training to improve teacher quality, or reducing
class sizes. We need to consider both together, and ways of making the most of the
opportunities of smaller classes and ways of dealing with large classes. There is an
allied need to plan for the effective deployment of teaching assistants and other adults
in educational settings.
Reflections on the study
Now that most of the data for the study have been analysed and the planned papers have
been written it is possible to look back and ask what lessons have been learned. Some
features of the study have proved to be sound. We believe the longitudinal design though
expensive in time and funds was especially valuable. In the case of correlational, i.e.,
non-experimental designs, without random allocation, a longitudinal design is essential
to make any judgments about causality. It allowed us to examine the effect of class size
and extra adults, while controlling for previous factors, including prior levels of
educational achievement. It allowed us to build changes in class size between years into
our analyses. We also worked hard to build on existing expertise in multi-level
modelling techniques and develop statistical models sophisticated enough to model the
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