§ Miss Lestorasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science on what size of class will plans for new primary schools be based in the future.
§ Mrs. ThatcherIt is for local education authorities and those responsible for voluntary schools to decide how to brief the designers of new schools on this matter. Nothing in the Department's Regulations or practice requires primary schools to be designed to accommodate classes of a specified size. The minimum teaching areas laid down in the Regulations are related to the total number of pupils to be accommodated in the whole school and not to classes. Many teachers prefer to have a range of suitably designed spaces available so that different activities can take place in groups of varying sizes and most new primary schools are being designed to take account of this trend.