School size (not just class size) around the world

[Anonymous]

I know US is about middle of the road for class size, larger than Europe but smaller than Asia, but does anyone know how SCHOOL size varies across countries?

We have these 3000 4000 student HS in US. Is that common world wide?

[Anonymous]

Bump

[Anonymous]

That's a great question. I would love to know the answer too.

[Anonymous]

In china, 30-50 students per class, from 1st grade to high school. Some very popular high schools may have upto 70 students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In china, 30-50 students per class, from 1st grade to high school. Some very popular high schools may have upto 70 students.

OP was asking about school size, not classroom size

[Anonymous]

The biggest high schools have 2000 kids in Australia.

[Anonymous]

Biggest 1-12 has 1780 kids, but they are in 3 different buildings. The smallest school has 8 kids 1 through 9.
City high schools are about 1200-1500. The ones in small towns and counties are 500-1100.

[Anonymous]

My dc's hs in FC had almost 2800 students. I seriously doubt there are many high-schools around the world that have that many students. More kids per class--yes--but not more kids per school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My dc's hs in FC had almost 2800 students. I seriously doubt there are many high-schools around the world that have that many students. More kids per class--yes--but not more kids per school.

That's my expectation as well. Why is that? I hate how huge they are making our local high school, and I feel it will be detriment to our child's experience (early lunches, difficulty to participate in mainstream ECs and have to branch out to find space on obscure/available). not to mention, from a public health standpoint, a huge school is just much harder to manage especially with shared facilities and ventilation.

It's ironic, since America has so much more land than those other countries, our cost / sq ft is probably lower than all of Europe.

[Anonymous]

I don't know how it is in Europe, but high school isn't compulsory in China and Japan.

High schools have entrance exams, and you can fail to get into high school if you fail the exam.

High schools therefore don't need to expand to meet population growth. They aren't required to.

Tough luck if you can't get in.

In Japan, this means enrolling in one of the low standards private high schools that were built to service failing students.

In China, you enroll in vocational schools that generally lead to dead end jobs with low wages.

In America, high schools are required to accommodate population growth, and we have trouble building schools fast enough to deal with it in the hotbed areas.

I suspect many parts of Europe don't have the population growth rates of America due to low birth rates/low immigration. Therefore the high schools aren't put in as much stress. But that's just a generalization. You would have to do a country by country analysis.

[Anonymous]

This is so interesting! In the rural US where I grew up, my local high school was ~600 students over four years; all the kids from cities with their 1000s of yearmates surprised me so much when I got to college!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know how it is in Europe, but high school isn't compulsory in China and Japan.

High schools have entrance exams, and you can fail to get into high school if you fail the exam.

High schools therefore don't need to expand to meet population growth. They aren't required to.

Tough luck if you can't get in.

In Japan, this means enrolling in one of the low standards private high schools that were built to service failing students.

In China, you enroll in vocational schools that generally lead to dead end jobs with low wages.

In America, high schools are required to accommodate population growth, and we have trouble building schools fast enough to deal with it in the hotbed areas.

I suspect many parts of Europe don't have the population growth rates of America due to low birth rates/low immigration. Therefore the high schools aren't put in as much stress. But that's just a generalization. You would have to do a country by country analysis.

Wow - I didn't realize that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't know how it is in Europe, but high school isn't compulsory in China and Japan.

High schools have entrance exams, and you can fail to get into high school if you fail the exam.

High schools therefore don't need to expand to meet population growth. They aren't required to.

Tough luck if you can't get in.

In Japan, this means enrolling in one of the low standards private high schools that were built to service failing students.

In China, you enroll in vocational schools that generally lead to dead end jobs with low wages.

In America, high schools are required to accommodate population growth, and we have trouble building schools fast enough to deal with it in the hotbed areas.

I suspect many parts of Europe don't have the population growth rates of America due to low birth rates/low immigration. Therefore the high schools aren't put in as much stress. But that's just a generalization. You would have to do a country by country analysis.

This is a good analysis.

[Anonymous]

I think schools are much smaller in Europe than here. I don't remember sitting in a classroom without windows in Europe, ever.

So yeah, ventilation is much easier and keeping schools open in a pandemic is therefore also easier.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think schools are much smaller in Europe than here. I don't remember sitting in a classroom without windows in Europe, ever.

So yeah, ventilation is much easier and keeping schools open in a pandemic is therefore also easier.

Many of our high schools were built in the energy-savings through no windows 1970s. Very unfortunate!