Big classes are not new

SChooL classes of 45 (Mail) are not new. Before I married in 1970, I worked in the North-east where I had a reception class of 49. We were based in the school hall as no classroom was large enough.

Another teacher worked with me in the mornings, but I was in sole charge in the afternoons. As the hall was also our dining room, we had to stop lessons early, pack away equipment and prepare the space for lunches.

It happened because a new housing estate was built in an adjacent village, but no plans had been made for extra school places. on the first day of term, the teachers gathered in the playground with empty registers and children were allocated to classes according to their dates of birth. sONIA BIGNeLL (nee DeWs),

Thorpe Bay, essex. I ReSIGNeD from the NASuWT in 2000 as a result of the failure of teachers’ unions to focus on class sizes rather than pay.

Current difficulties of recruiting and retaining teachers are mainly due to the size of the classes they’re expected to ‘teach’. In many cases, ‘teaching’ is little more than ‘crowd control’: the opportunity to give pupils the individual time they need to progress in their subjects is impossible.

As a deputy headteacher in Bedfordshire for 25 years, I wrestled with the county council in an effort to

get it to acknowledge the problem of overcrowded classrooms. This had resulted in the deletion from our timetables of practical science and technology and sometimes sport coaching.

I was bluntly told to ‘shut up and get on with it: the unions weren’t making an issue of it, so why should I?’

I volunteered for early retirement, and many teachers would now do the same now, but local authorities can no longer afford to accept early retirements, even on medical grounds. So stressed teachers struggle to control huge classes. What a farce education has become. TONY CALLAGHAN,

Alpington, Norfolk.