Education strategies continue to evolve. The latest see a class size of 112 students being taught by 5 teachers. When it comes to direct instruction, the school claims one teacher can teach 40 or 50 students.

Such classrooms are the new form of composite classes. A paradigm that is contested by some educationalists. The traditional composite class was often created by combining two year groups (e.g. yr  5 & yr 6). This evoloved to creating aged based classes then to classes catering for students with similar skills or needs. Often, there is only a few composite classes in a school, leading some parents to feel that their child is being disadvantaged.

Some doyens of pedagogy believe that the multi-age approach is better for teaching and learning. Mixed grade classes provide much more overt recognition of different learning needs. However, others counsel that schools should have either all or no composite classes to overcome the stigma often associated with composite classes.

Source: Pallava Singhal and Inga Tong, The classroom with 112 students. The Sun-Herald May 21, 2017 p. 12.