Small Class Teaching

In Hong Kong, small class teaching has been a popular topic for a few years; people think that small class teaching can improve the quality of teaching. Government try hard to carry out this new concept, government wants to change the maximum number of students in a secondary school class from 40 to 36; but is it work?

Small class teaching is free, the parents don’t need to pay for it, and It may also make students improve. If students study in a smaller class, they can be more concentrate; because the teachers can supervise them more easily. Teachers can take care of the results of students, beside, the efficiency of learning and teaching will be improved. Small class teaching can reduce the pressures of teachers, and the works of teachers. It can increase the communications between teachers and students, students have more opportunities to participate in class activities. Students have chances to express their ideas and opinions; it may help to improve students’ results of study.

Every issue can be see from different perspectives, there are advantages for small class teaching; but there are also some disadvantages. Small class teaching costs a lot, and there are some failure examples of small class teaching. In a few states of America, people need to pay more taxes for small class teaching; but unfortunately it doesn’t make a big improvement, like in California. It may cause a financial burden of government; the government may reduce the expenditure of other category, such as welfare.

A survey of education in England point out that a successful teaching mode should be co-operate with attention of parents, good attitude of learning of students and suitable teaching method of teachers. In Hong Kong, teachers don’t have any courses that train them to be small class teachers, so that they may not be affective on teaching in small class. Then the expenditure of small class teaching will be wasted.