Education
Schools
Two things, kept deliberately apart: the national primary-school series that the CSO publishes openly, and a post-primary school list whose licence has not been confirmed.
Which is which is stated on each, because only one of them is safe to quote publicly today.
Primary schools, nationally
CSO open data. Average class size runs from 2003/04; classes and pupils from 1999/2000.
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| Year | Value | Relative |
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An average is not an experience. Average class size is a national mean across mainstream classes. No particular child sits in a class of 22.2, it tells you nothing about any school or county, and it excludes special classes and special schools. A mean that moves by a fraction of a pupil can still hide large changes at either end of the distribution.
Post-primary schools
Sources
What this does not show
- The primary series is national. It describes no school, no county and no child, and a national mean can move by a fraction while the distribution behind it changes a great deal.
- Average class size covers mainstream classes only. Special classes and special schools are excluded, so it is not a measure of every child's experience.
- DEIS status, fee-paying status and gender composition are administrative characteristics of a school. They are not measures of quality, of capacity, or of outcomes.
- A school's address is where the building is, not where its pupils live. Nothing here supports a claim about which children attend which school.
- The post-primary figures, where present, come from a workbook whose licence and provenance are unverified. They are shown for internal review and must not be quoted publicly until that is resolved.