HC Deb 01 July 1997 vol 297 c100W
Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment what are the(a) average and (b) maximum numbers of children in primary school classes in East Sussex. [5956]

Mr. Byers

The available information is shown in the following table.

The information in Table 2 puts into context the information on maximum class sizes in Table 1.

Table 1: Average and maximum class size taught by one teacher in maintained primary schools in the East Sussex Local Education Authority area in January 1997 (provisional estimates)
Average class size Maximum size class
East Sussex 28.2 36

Table 2: Numbers of classes and pupils by class size for classes taught by one teacher in maintained primary schools in the East Sussex Local Education Authority area in January 1997 (provisional estimates)
Size of class Number of classes Number of pupils
1–20 133 2,044
21–30 959 25,676
31–35 695 22,574
36–40 21 756
41 or more 0 0
Total 1,808 51,050