A lot has been said and written about my alleged comments on “class sizes of 70 being acceptable”.  I therefore thought a bit of background might help clarify what I actually said.

I was asked at the ATL (Association of Teachers and Lecturers) conference whether I thought that a class size of 38 was acceptable.  I replied that we had legislated to reduce class sizes for 5, 6 and 7 year olds to below 30, and that 38 was not without its worries for older primary school classes.  I added that I knew that a teacher with teaching assistants and higher level teaching assistants might be able to successfully teach a class of 38.  This was not well received by the conference who replied that 38 was unacceptable.

At a press briefing afterwards we had further discussion and I said that I though further regulation of class sizes for older children than infants could be inflexible.  I added that I had seen a lesson at Thomas Telford School (one of the best in the country), where a charismatic teacher taught maths to a class of 70 using a series of screen to project the work on and a number of others, who may have been teachers or assistants, providing personal attention to the class.  It appeared to be working well.  I was tring to make a point about flexibility and that the quality of teaching is as important as class size.

If I had then been asked by a journalist whether I thought a class size of 70 was acceptable I would, of course, have said that it wasn’t but that we needed to give schools flexibility as we drive up the number of adults working with children in our classrooms.Sadly, without asking for such clarification, the Press Association journalist then wrote up the story as Schools Minister says class sizes of 70 acceptable.  Once out there the story was then too good to ignore or even to check with me and days of comment based on an untruth follows. 

So that is that – how a big story emerges out of nothing.