I think for Victorian government schools, there is a maximum of 20 or 22 for prep. Not sure about the other grades. Cait is in grade two and I think there are 18 kids.
Non Government schools can do what they like. My friends son was in a prep grade of 27 kids.
In SA the ratio is normally 24-26 in Private schools and about 28-30 in government schools. But some schools are able to have ratios at about 20 deending on the finances of the school.
Ok, I'm going to wade in and say the ratio is not so important as the skill of the particular teacher. My daughter is getting more quality attention this year in a class of 28 students than she did 2 years ago in a class of only 22 - it is simply the skill and passion of a more experienced teacher that has made the difference.
Different states might be different but in the public system in NSW 20 in kindy/prep is about normal. No more than 22 kids. As the age of the students go up the student to teacher ratio goes up as well.
I'm a teacher in a government school in rural NSW. Our school has slightly less than 80 students and there are 4 teachers. Kindy is small, year 1/2 (mid 20's) year 3/4 (mid 20's), and year 5/6 (mid teens) just due to the number of students in different stages of schooling. NSW gov schools are generally 20 or less in kinder, up to 24 in years 1 and 2 and up to 31/32 in other grades.
Also, the other part to the question is whether the higher class numbers result in a greater number of specialist teachers. For eg, in our school with 28-30 in the classroom, there are specialist teachers who teach only - sports, ICT (twice a week), information literacy (ie in the library), italian, and music. There can be benefits to this.
Thanks for your advice.
I actually prefer the school with the larger classes in higher grades but I wasn't sure if it would be an issue. It's a pretty big school which also concerned me but they won't be taking out of area students any more so next year's intake should be smaller.
Public schools in nSW will be getting smaller classes as the grades go on as part of their new policies, it also depends on how close they are to getting an extra teacher. This year we qualified for 16 teachers by about 5 kids so all our class sizes are quite good (DD has 25 in her Yr 4 class) had we not got those extra 5 kids we would have had only 15 classes which meant the primary classes would have been considerably bigger.
Unless it is a private school they cannot guarantee class sizes in primary.
BTW Marydean - brilliant point.
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student teacher ratios
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