It is disheartening to hear that the lower enrolment of 18 schools has motivated their upcoming mergers (Nine pairs of schools to merge amid falling births, enrolment, April 8).

I would have liked to see these schools taking lower enrolment numbers in their stride and attempting to deliver the same education curriculum but at a higher quality, with a lower student-to-teacher ratio.

Every school should be a good school. This is the high watermark set by the Ministry of Education.

It is an admirable ideal to be proud of.

For this to take place, the right infrastructure and the right training need to be put in place. Smaller class sizes would allow teachers to understand each child better, and to tailor the delivery of the same curriculum according to the varied needs of the children in that smaller group setting. This is much harder to do when class sizes exceed 30.

When the children are comfortable in their environment and feel confident in their progress, they will naturally enjoy learning and love school. It would be a wonderful thing if more children could be converted to feel this way through more one-on-one attention.

While not having breadth of co-curricular activity (CCA) choices may be an issue, I, as a parent, would value smaller class sizes and stronger delivery of the curriculum with better teacher-child relationships over having a multitude of CCAs to choose from.

Melissa Lim Yingli