While Indian schools have always had large numbers of students, the situation got particularly out of hand in the 1990s where it was not unheard of to have classrooms with close to 60 students. To make matters worse there was only one person playing a mentoring role for 60 students – the class teacher. This created generations of students who suffered from a curtailed amount of personal guidance in their formative years.
International schools brought smaller classrooms into the environment of Indian schools. It became evident quite quickly that students began to develop better in these smaller classrooms. It is quite obvious that the lower student-to-teacher ratio benefited them and here lies the very crux of this article – how can your child gain a competitive advantage from a healthier ratio. Firstly we must differentiate between what we mean by a healthy ratio and a low ratio.
Creating a healthy ratio within the concept of a low number of students per teacher is very crucial towards attaining the benefits of both a good amount of personal time with the teacher and the benefits of studying in a classroom of your peers. Most schools today have a ratio of about 10 students per teacher and while this seems to be ideal in theory it leaves little room to create a dynamic schedule where some students may need more personal guidance than others. RIMS International School and Junior College believes that the ideal ratio is 1 teacher per 5 students. Now we can move on to the benefits.

1. Personalized Learning: While students benefit from a standardized curriculum that is tailor made for the tasks that the world offers them, they also have a variety of skills and ways to achieve their goals. It is important that a teacher can identify these differences so that they ensure that their students derive the most out of their learning experience. This is only possible with a low, healthy ratio so that the teacher can create a balance between the differences and the need to build on uniformity.

2. Mental Strengthening: Students suffer from many forms of stress because of several different factors. Teachers in a healthy ratio environment are able to spend enough time with each student in order to understand their mental strengths and build on their weaknesses while enhancing their strengths. Such mentoring is very important; both for performance in school as well as in their future careers where stress and pressure builds and only the cool and calm survive and do well.

3. Identifying Learning Difficulties: Similar to point one, a teacher in a healthy ratio environment is able to identify more accurately the students that may suffer from previously unidentified learning problems. This will allow them to talk to parents of these students and create an environment where the difficulty turns into an advantage.

4. Competitive Confidence: Every classroom is competitive in some form or another, it's the way that human beings function. While competition is healthy for development, bad performances or unfulfilled personal goals can affect the confidence of students. In a smaller classroom, the teacher is able to speak to each child in order to understand their reaction to their performance and help them understand important character building traits that aid them in recovering from any loss of confidence.

These are but some of the many ways in which a healthy student-to-teacher ratio is beneficial for your child. Ensuring both academic and mental progress and health creates an individual that is both secure in their mental makeup as well as confident in their competitiveness. Read More...