ABSTRACT
Any visitor from a country such as the USA or the United Kingdom on a whirlwind tour
throughout countries on and near the Pacific rim, from Myanmar to Japan and then on to
Australia and New Zealand, would, if s/he ventured into schools, find much that was familiar
but also much that was strange and puzzling. At primary level, in particular, there would be
variations in the size of school and of classes. Some schools, in rural settings, would have
fewer than fifty pupils, although they would not be a mere forty kilometres apart, as is often
found in the UK. In conurbations such as Singapore, over 2,000 pupils would be the school
norm, with many classes of over forty pupils. In Europe and the United States a big elementary
school might have between 300 and 400 pupils and average class sizes of thirty children. In
some cases, for example in the Scandinavian countries, class size is limited by law to below
twenty-five pupils. Generally these pupils are placed in mixed gender groups and sit around
tables or desks pushed together. A typical arrangement is shown in Figure 6.1. In those
countries where class size is forty or greater, pupils usually sit in rows facing the teacher and
are streamed by ability. Figure 6.2 shows a typical arrangement in a Singapore school for
grade 1. A typical grade 6 classsroom in Singapore has rows of desks facing the teacher.
