ABSTRACT
The standards people strive to attain in education are often implicit rather than stated. And, because of the nature of our system, it is not always clear who is entitled to specify standards. Once standards are agreed the remainder of the process is simple. Standards applied to clientele gives the quantitativeneed, which, compared with the present provision, shows up any deficiencies or surpluses. Standards may be so general as to be meaningless, so idealistic as to be useless, or so inextricably interwoven with other factors as to make specifying them in isolation a very crude affair. In setting standards, whether arbitrarily or logically, it is important to take into account any changes the future may be likely to bring. There is an immediate complication: the Standards for School Premises Regulations specify a minimum room size of 540 square feet for classes of forty pupils.
