§ Mr. SteinbergTo ask the Secretary of State for Education what measures his Department will take to reduce the number of classes of over 30 per teacher; and what pupil to teacher ratio his Department has as a policy objective.
§ Mr. ForthOur policy is to provide greater autonomy for schools so that they can make their own decisions on the deployment of resources. It would run counter to that policy to seek to impose a view on what the pupil to teacher ratio should be, or to introduce measures based on some arbitrarily determined maximum class size.