Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will take steps to introduce statutory class size limits in key stage two and above.

Schools are free to decide their class sizes (other than infant classes), in a way that is consistent with raising attainment and helping pupils to achieve their potential.

The assessment of the evidence by the Education Endowment Foundation found some evidence for additional benefits of smaller class sizes with younger children, suggesting that smaller class sizes may be a more effective approach during the early stages of primary school. For older year groups, however, the impact of reducing class sizes on educational attainment is low compared to the high cost of doing so. More information can be found here: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/teaching-learning-toolkit/reducing-class-size.

Research by Professor John Hattie found that reducing class sizes ranked 186 out of 250 on influences on pupil achievement. More information on this can be found online at: https://visible-learning.org/.

Despite an increase of more than a million pupils in state-funded primary and secondary schools since 2010, at secondary level, average class sizes remain low at only 22.4 pupils, whilst the average primary class has remained broadly stable at 26.7 pupils.