News
Class Size and Learning | PSI | 16 Aug 2026
At the 14th Africa Evidence Summit held July 23–24, 2026, Nneka Esther Osadolor of the African Economic Policy Forum presented "Does Class Size Matter for Learning? For Whom and How? Evidence from Public Primary Schools in Rwanda," examining whether reducing class sizes improves learning in a context where Rwanda's public primary schools had a pupil-classroom ratio of about 60 and a pupil-teacher ratio of about 48 in 2023/24, with roughly 80% of lower-primary pupils below expected reading levels. Exploiting the 69-pupil enrolment threshold introduced under the RwandaEQUIP reform—which increased the probability of schools creating at least two streams by about 49 percentage points—the study used a fuzzy regression discontinuity design with two-stage least squares across 761 public primary schools and approximately 4,471 school-by-grade observations, drawing on Foundational Literacy and Numeracy assessments and Term 1 and Term 3 exam scores in English, Kinyarwanda, Mathematics, Science and Elementary Technology (SET), and Social and Religious Studies (SRS). Reducing class size by roughly 16 pupils per stream (from about 52 to 36) produced significant short-term gains—approximately 0.23 standard deviations in English, 0.22 in SET, 0.20 in SRS, and a marginally significant 0.13 in Kinyarwanda, with near-zero effects in Mathematics—but these effects largely faded by Term 3 (English and SET falling to about 0.04, SRS to 0.02), suggesting smaller classes alone cannot sustain learning gains without complementary teacher support. Effects were concentrated in Grades 1–3 (English up to 0.35 SD, Kinyarwanda about 0.37 SD, SET up to 0.60 SD, and more likely to persist) versus weaker and sometimes negative effects in Grades 4–6, and were strong in single-shift schools but near zero in double-shift schools, where increased teacher workload may offset benefits. The study found a non-linear relationship, with outcomes suffering above 45 pupils per stream, largest gains when classes reached 40–45 pupils, and diminishing returns below about 35, leading Osadolor to recommend prioritizing Grades 1–3, adopting 40–45 pupils per stream as a practical benchmark, accelerating the transition to single-shift schooling, combining class-size reduction with structured lesson guides, coaching and continuous professional development, and avoiding blanket reductions across all grades—concluding that class size does matter, but its impact depends critically on where, when, and how reductions are implemented, and that policymakers should pursue optimal rather than minimal class sizes to maximize learning gains within fiscal and institutional constraints.
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