Mr. Martin Lally:

I thank Mr. Hubert Loftus, the Chairman and committee members. As Mr. Loftus said I am with the inspectorate which evaluates teaching and learning in all classrooms in all State primary schools. By their nature, these classrooms and the schools will vary, including, as mentioned, in terms of location whether urban or rural, in terms of gender and language of instruction, school size and the profile of the pupils and their backgrounds. In my experience and that of my colleagues in the inspectorate, the quality of educational achievement of the pupils in a school is dependent on a series of variables that impact both individually and collectively on their attainment. The inspector would view certain key drivers as pushing educational quality and pupil attainment. As such the inspectorate would focus on these aspects when it goes about its work.

Among the aspects we focus on when we make our evaluation judgments would be the following: planning and preparation by the teacher, that is, how well they have planned and their level of preparedness for their lessons; the way they manage and organise their classrooms; the way they monitor and assess students work; and their own personal knowledge and competence, which would include the methodologies they might use. Factors in this latter aspect include whether they are current and appropriate, and skilled in the use of bulky class teaching methodologies, including differentiation. This is a particular methodology employed to ensure every child gets an education that is geared, programmed and tailored for their particular ability. Additional factors include the quality of pupils' learning experience and the student voice. We would tune into the student voice and make our judgments on it as we would on the quality of the leadership and management of the school and the level of engagements by parents and community.

These are among the many factors and variables that we look at when arriving at our judgments. I am not trying to dismiss the role of class size as an influencing factor on pupil achievement but what I am endeavouring to do is provide a more balanced and accurate representation of the many factors that are involved in pupil attainment. In my opinion and in the opinion of much research, it would be misleading to inflate the impact of school size by comparison with the impact that these other factors and other variables would hold on student attainment.

My colleague, Mr. Hubert Loftus, mentioned the value for money review, of which I was a part. At the request of the value for money review committee, the inspectorate conducted an analysis of data it holds from its own inspection programmes to ascertain whether there is a relationship between the size of the school and the quality of the student outcome or learning, as indicated by inspectorate judgment and the views and opinions of parents and pupils that were gathered from questionnaires. I can speak further about this in a moment if members wish but the finding was that very extremely minor differences were noted in the areas evaluated there was not a significant correlation or relationship between school size and the quality of student outcomes. This is something that is reflected in other international research. The benefits of small class size were found to be most prominent in the earlier years but it has also been shown to have a short-lived effect and it diminishes over a short period with the result that the majority of countries consider that investment in education is better channelled into some other competences and variables, most particularly, teacher ability, teacher competence and teacher upskilling and training rather than on reducing class size as a single variable.