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Society

Chinese urban schools strive to 'slim' oversize classes

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2016-03-30 09:06Xinhua Editor: Gu Liping

At a cramped classroom in Heze city, 87 students pack into their desks. The room is so full, students brim to the blackboard, with the only visible space two small aisles that allow them to escape for recess.

It is a common sight at Mudan District Experimental Primary School in Heze City, east China's Shandong Province.

The school has more than 5,000 students, while the average class size is around 80, almost double the the national standard of 45 for urban primary schools and 50 for urban middle schools.

Last week, the Heze city government held a meeting to discuss reducing its oversized classes, promising to build and expand 149 schools in the following two years, as over half of the city's class sizes in primary and middle schools go beyond class size standards.

A provincial survey conducted in 2015 showed that more than 40 percent of classes in primary and middle schools were oversized in Shandong. Ten percent of them had a class size of more than 66.

East China's Anhui Province faces a similar problem. Statistics released by its education authorities last year revealed that around 13 percent of its middle and primary school class sizes were above standards.

"In other regions, the overcrowding problem is even more shocking," said Yang Dongping, president of the 21st Century Education Research Institute.

At a middle school of Zhoukou City, in China's most populated province Henan, the average class size is more than 100. Students who sit in the back row have to stand up; otherwise they cannot hear what their teachers say. Three and four students commonly share one desk, and teachers have to use a loudspeaker, Yang said.

ADVERSE EFFECTS

Squeezing as many students as possible into classrooms can hinder education as students receive less one-on-one attention.

"There are too many students per class. I cannot take care of everyone. Less than one fifth of them have the chance to interact with me," said Shandong-based teacher Wu Jie.

  

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