Class Size And Performance Essay

Literature Review Pointing us in the direction of inequity in education is the unsettling inherited tradition of our colonial past and the birth of the denominational or government assisted schools in Trinidad and Tobago. In a 2008 article entitled Race, religion and performance in the SEA by Kevin Baldeosingh, the author cites the top one hundred performing students in SEA and their schools, where the denominational schools outperformed the government schools. Sixty-five percent of the students who scored in the top one hundred came from the denominational schools, fifteen percent came from private schools and fifteen percent came from government schools. (It is assumed that the other five percent also came from other denominational schools not mentioned in the article). These results were calculated based on the percentage of schools as compared to the percentage of students who made the highest marks in the

Sikuku (2015) very recent study into the Influence of School Environment on Pupils Academic Performance in Public Primary Schools in Bungoma Subcounty Kenya, provides an expansive collection of literature that purports that class size does in fact affect students’ academic performance. The author cited Cahen, Filby, McCutcheon, & Kyle, (1983) Class Size and Instruction program, where class sizes were reduced from approximately 19 or 20 to 13 in Virginia, and from approximately 33 to 22 in California. Ultimately, the research showed that the smaller class sizes performed better than that of the larger classes. Other cases that the author cites that supports our shared argument that class size does indeed affect performance includes but are not limited to a Canadian study entitled “Class size and Student Achievement” by Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Dominic J. Brewer, Adam Gamoran, and J Douglas Willms from Cornell Higher Education Research Institute at Cornell University and Katunzi & Ndalichako