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High schools have only slightly reduced average class sizes despite their numbers of foreign fee-paying students almost halving in the past three years.
A survey of 66 schools by the Post-Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA) has found that average class sizes across years 9 to 13 dropped by between one and two pupils from 2004 to 2006.
The schools appear to have coped with a 45 per cent drop in fee-paying overseas students, who helped to fund many extra teachers at the market peak, through a combination of extra Government funding, other fundraising, raiding their operations grants, cutting back subject options and in some cases running financial deficits.
But Secondary Principals' Association president Graham Young said yesterday that the overseas student market was picking up again this year, relieving the pressure on some schools.
"The indications are that there's a 10 to 20 per cent improvement in international student numbers from the year before," he said.
The numbers from China were still well below their peak, but numbers from Europe and South America were rising.
Domestic student numbers also dropped slightly last year for the first time since 1991 and are expected to keep falling for the next few years due to a declining birth rate through the 1990s.
The PPTA is due to lodge claims for its next pay round in May asking the Government to take advantage of the fall in rolls to reduce class sizes by maintaining teacher numbers.
President Robin Duff said teacher numbers had risen over the past six years by 1800, or about 10 per cent, in line with a staffing review in 2001. But this increase has been used mainly to lift teachers' non-contact hours from three to five hours a week, so the effect on class sizes has been minimal.
He said the Government promised last year to implement the final steps in the 2001 review - a further 400 teachers for management roles, more guidance staff and reducing average class sizes by two pupils. But so far it had not given itself any deadlines for these steps.
"We haven't been able to get the ministry to sit down and talk about curriculum staffing, so the issue has come to the fore in the industrial forum," he said.
The union's survey shows average class sizes have come down most dramatically in senior classes - from 17.4 pupils in 2004 to 15.2 in 2006 in year 13.
In years 9 and 10 the average has improved much less, down from 25.2 to 24.7 pupils per class.
The proportion of all classes with more than 30 students has dropped from 9.3 per cent to 6.6 per cent.
Mr Young, the principal of Tauranga Boys' College, said principals supported the push for smaller classes, despite a lack of evidence that it would improve learning.
Mr Young said: "What it's about is working conditions for teachers. The workload and stress for teachers is where this issue rightly has been taken up by the union."
The Government had not fully funded schools for the increase in teachers' non-contact hours, forcing schools to fund the extra teachers by other means.
Mr Young said: "Schools have had to do that by reducing options in some schools, increasing class sizes and changing their timetables. It's been up on the radar that a lot of schools are really struggling ... Most parents look at increasing income from cake stalls to bottle drives to the international student market.
"Schools have either increased their incomes ... or are running a deficit. We are in the throes of completing our annual accounts for the 2006 school year and it will be interesting to see how many are going to report deficits."
