Pupils in Courier Country say statistics about teacher numbers and class sizes won’t guarantee them a good education.
As a political row broke out over latest figures showing a fall in the number of teachers in Scotland (link), pupils told us that statistics don’t tell the whole story.
They point out that misbehaving pupils can disrupt learning in a small class while a big class of pupils keen to learn can power ahead.
Fifth-year pupils from Madras College in St Andrews were visiting the Courier on Wednesday when a mountain of statistics on education in Scotland landed on the newsdesk.
When we put some of the findings to them, the pupils said they want Scotland’s education secretary Mike Russell to spend a day at their school to see what it’s like to learn in a school building that puts them at risk of asbestos poisoning and that is ”freezing”.
Mr Russell said teacher numbers are above target, class sizes for primary one are at a record low and key investment in buildings means more children attending better quality schools.
However, Rory White (16) said: ”I think the quality of teaching is much more important than the class size.”
Fellow fifth-year pupil Stephan Mill said they all knew teachers who could ”handle” a class and teachers who could not, and that had little to do with the actual size of the class and everything to do with the teachers’ abilities and qualities.
Tamara Levy said: ”As long as a class can work with each other, it doesn’t matter what size of class it is.”
But Maria Lagatskaya pointed out that there are times when class size is significant.
”Sometimes it matters if a class is too big and some pupils need extra help,” she said. ”Then it can seem like the teacher is always helping others and can’t really give one-to-one help.”
The Madras group learned first hand what every politician experiences with the best of intentions, not everyone agrees the way ahead and approves of the choices made.
Rory said that in a ”dream world” that would require the teenagers’ parents to pay astronomical taxes there would be one teacher for every pupil.
”We don’t have enough money for that,” he said.
But, no matter if money was no object, Stephan disagreed.
”I don’t think one-to-one teaching would be very good. You learn stuff from other people in your class. It’s not just the teacher you learn from.”
Tamara said small classes could have learning disrupted by pupils misbehaving.
”It is more important having classes of pupils at the same level who want to learn and (who are) progressing at the same speed than having smaller classes,” she said.
The statistics that caused most reaction related to the state of school buildings, in particular the reference to 83% of pupils being taught in schools that are in good or satisfactory condition.
”We’ll be the other 17%,” said Stephan. ”We have a school you cannot put pins in the walls or you will get asbestos poisoning.
”In our school the blinds are older than half the teachers. The heating works in the summer but doesn’t seem to work at any other time.”
He said he would like to see Mike Russell at the school.
”I would love to have a face-to-face with him about what it’s like here.”