Forum: Trade-off between teacher quality and class size

I refer to the letter by Dr Hana Alhadad in response to the Minister for Education’s press interview on teacher quality versus class size (

Teacher quality and class size must work together,

Jan 3).

I agree with Dr Hana about the importance of smaller class sizes, but understood the minister’s points differently.

She asserts that it is not an either-or, trade-off scenario, but perhaps it is.

I give an example where there are 10,000 people interviewing to be teachers, and there are 150,000 students. Assuming 5,000 made the cut to be teachers, the class ratio thus is one teacher to 30 students.

To reduce the class ratio to one to 20, there would then need to be another 2,500 teachers.

This will have to be drawn from the pool of 5,000 rejected candidates who were deemed not suitable for the teaching profession earlier, but could now qualify. In my view, that is indeed a trade-off.

So while it is ideal to have smaller class sizes, the practical point is there are not enough quality teachers to go around.

Tan Peng Hoe