Does class size matter?

ECENTLY, I came across

House Bill (HB) 548, or

“An Act Regulating Class Size in

All Public Schools and Appointing Funds Therefor,” pending consideration before the House

Committee on Basic Education.

Indeed, the proposed measure’s intention is noble in uplifting the lives of the public school teacher. However, it should be studied carefully in terms of whether this is the most cost-efficient reform, from a menu of priorities, if our country wants to improve the quality of our basic education and improve the working conditions of our public school teachers.

There are different kinds of education reforms. There are contemporary reforms where changes in governance structures are introduced; subsidies and vouchers are developed; and assessments and other student interventions are established. Then we have the traditional reforms which simply increase government spending and budget such as building more classrooms, hiring more teachers and reducing class size.

The contemporary reforms are preferred over the traditional reforms in most countries. Reducing class size belongs to the traditional reform as it merely increases government spending on teachers and classrooms with no real basis to correlate this with improving the quality of education.

Standard class size

The bill is no doubt primarily for the benefit of teachers. It sets the standard class size at 20 students in kindergarten and 35 in Grades 1 to 12. But the bill also allows large class sizes, without any ceiling or cap, as long as the teacher handling it shall be compensated with an honorarium equivalent to 4 percent of his or her daily rate for every student in excess of 20 for kindergarten or 35 for Grades 1 to 12. This may actually inspire some teachers to keep the class size large in order to justify the honorarium rather than reducing it, which eventually defeats the objective of the bill.

Unintended consequences

Reducing class size would entail construction of more classrooms and the hiring of more teachers. This would not only increase the cost for the government, it also does not ensure improving the quality of education in these reduced classes. Hiring of new, inexperienced teachers to teach in small classes, for example, may not equate into better student achievement scores, as opposed to bigger class sizes currently being handled by more experienced and trained teachers.

Size may not be the problem

One of the biggest arguments in support of this bill is that teachers are burdened with a lot of administrative responsibilities and handling of the discipline of students, especially in a large class size that takes their focus off teaching.

Certainly, teachers should be made to focus more on teaching and less on administrative responsibilities, especially when it is not compensated. But there are other ways worth looking into to improve the working conditions of a teacher. For instance, substantially reducing student cases of misconduct and mental health issues among learners by hiring more guidance counselors in the public school system may be a better alternative.

Why not just increase Gastpe slots and subsidies?

Having crowded and congested classrooms is a perennial problem in the public school system. And if the purpose is to reduce class size in public schools, it is worth looking at the proposed further expansion of the subsidy programs under Republic Act (RA) 8545, or the “Expanded Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education Act,” or simply “E-Gastpe Law.”

The E-Gastpe Law was passed precisely to decongest the public schools and allow students from there to enroll in accredited private schools where the government contracts out education service and pays a fixed subsidy per student to the private schools where they enroll. Increasing the amount per student subsidy or increasing the number of slots may be more cost-efficient than mandating a class size in the public school system and hiring more teachers to teach.

Currently, the education service contracting, or ESC, subsidy is available only for students in Grades 7 to 10; and the teachers’ salary subsidy (TSS) is not available to senior high school teachers. The Senior High School Voucher Program is implemented among senior high school students pursuant to RA 10533.

Pending before the House of Representatives is a bill introduced by Rep. Roman Romulo to substitute for HBs 928 and 1723, which propose, among others, the expansion of education service contracting subsidy to K-6; and the expansion of the TSS to include teachers in Grades 11 and 12.

Meanwhile, at the Senate, Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian has introduced Senate Resolution 925, directing the conduct of a legislative inquiry to discuss and assess the implementation of RA 8545 for the purpose of crafting complementary amendatory legislation. Representative Romulo and Senator Gatchalian are co-chairpersons in EdCom 2, or the Second Congressional Commission on Education, a commission created under RA 11899 to evaluate and assess our Philippine education system and introduce innovative and targeted reforms.