Class Sizes
Education
Mike Hancock (Portsmouth South, Liberal Democrat)
To ask the Secretary of State for Education what the average class size was in the 16 to 19 education sector in the (a) 2009-10 and (b) 2010-11 academic year.
Nick Gibb (Minister of State (Schools), Education; Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, Conservative)
Class size information is not available for further education colleges.
The average class size for year groups 12 and 13 combined in state-funded secondary schools in England was 11.1 in January 2010 and 11.2 in January 2011.
Class size information is collected during a single selected period in each school on the day of the school census in January. A substantial number of pupils in year groups 12 and 13 were in private study during the selected period and are therefore not included in these figures (around a third of pupils were not included in January 2011).
The latest available information on class sizes is published in tables 7a to 7c of the Statistical First Release ‘Schools, Pupils and their Characteristics, January 2011’ available at
http://www.education.gov.uk/rsgateway/DB/SFR/s001012/index.shtml