education.wurk.net

Jay Mathews, a Washington Post Education Reporter, recently wrote an article about very large high schools in the US - high schools with more than four thousand students!

Not surprisingly such schools boast huge numbers of teachers and para-professionals too but, again not surprisingly, there is talk of splitting such schools into smaller learning communities where students will have regular contact with a smaller number of teachers.

Such talk is based around “research showing that students learn more and are more likely to stay in smaller schools where they feel teachers know and appreciate them.”.

Seems sensible - until you read further into the article and take note of the positive feedback on large schools given by many students, parents and teachers.

As always nothing seems clear cut. I would have thought tht the larger the school the more impersonal it was and the greater the chance of students becoming disenfranchised with a system so large they could easily become merely a statistic.

Some evidence though would seem to suggest that this is not the case though I haven’t yet found specific research to support this.

The debate then continues.
Is bigger better?
What are your views?
What about your personal experiences?