Part three of a series of three blog posts

This is my third and final blog post in the series focussed on TCS’s decision to have a school size of approximately 600 students. My first blog post focussed on the composition of our student body; the second blog post of the series provided the rationale for this size of school; and, this post will address the impact and outcomes of our “by design” school size.

At its core, an intentionally-sized TCS puts close and healthy relationships, an enhanced sense of place and community wellbeing as its top priorities. Based on historic, current and innovative educational research, an emphasis on the important social benefits of learning and living together, as a community, is paramount. Stated colloquially, when considering an educational foundation for students, “it is better to be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a big pond.” Also true would be “it takes a village to raise a child” and “less is more.”

Evidence abounds on the success of smaller schools. Intuitively, parents also can attest to this, particularly at the elementary levels (where often kids talk more to their parents!); they can see that smaller class sizes, assembly sizes, etc. mean more one-on-one and small group activities which enable greater attention, understanding and support of their children. Our alumni surveys, covering generations of graduates, continue to provide positive feedback on alumni’s personal experiences as a student and their personal and professional trajectory as adults. From a historical educational research perspective, in his ground-breaking publication A Place Called School, John Goodlad accumulated data from across the United States that demonstrated that “most schools clustering in the top [most outstanding] group of our sample were small.” In short, as Thomas Sergiovanni summarized in his book, Leadership in the School House, the “smallest schools in his [Goodlad’s] sample were better at solving their problems, were more intellectually oriented, had more caring teachers, and had higher levels of parent and student satisfaction.”

Only time and limited space in this blog prevents me from further expounding on the benefits of our smaller school at TCS and our ratio compositions of day/boarding, senior/junior, Canadian/international as well as considerations around gender balance and class size.

Schools like TCS that choose to be smaller, however, also have some bigger challenges. I outline some of those below.

Finances: As I did in my first blog on this topic, let me be transparent with the financials. As a not-for-profit, independent school we have two major sources of revenue: tuition and gifts. In order to cover the increase in costs, smaller schools like ours need to raise tuition and further focus on gift-giving (from supportive alumni, parents and friends of the School) in order to maintain our ideal school size. (That said, if you were to compare TCS fees with those of other independent schools, we are very close to one another, with some of the larger schools in Canada having higher fees than we do.)

Athletic competition: Perhaps the area where most parents and students notice the impact of our smaller school size and broad program offerings, with a more diverse student body, is in the athletics realm. Competing with significantly larger, predominately single-gender schools in large urban centres (as opposed to small town Ontario), is very challenging in some team sports, particularly, those North American sports requiring specialized development of skills, for example, skating or skiing. For students new to one of these sports, competing at a high, or elite, level is particularly challenging. It requires tremendous personal dedication and commitment. For TCS to commit to compete at an elite level, we would need to prioritize some sports teams over others, focus a disproportionate amount of effort on student-athlete recruitment and offer significantly more financial assistance to individuals with a specialized skill set. This is not something that we believe in.

But, for the record, TCS has prided itself on being “the little engine that could,” often hitting above our weight class and being David over Goliath when considering athletic competitions. In fact, we offer 19 different interschool sports and field more than 40 competitive teams. And we have a host of regional, inter-school and provincial championships and medals to also prove our disproportionate success over our larger competitors.

Teacher and staff workloads: On the academic front, smaller schools like TCS have other considerations such as teacher workloads. Commonly referred in independent school circles as a “triple threat,” independent school teachers have responsibilities in classroom, the boarding houses, and in the arts/athletics/service learning areas. But that’s not all. Teachers are formally advisors and unofficially, mentors; they also oversee clubs, events and have increasingly more administrative duties.

Smaller independent schools also tend to have more modestly-sized services to support our students and teachers. For example, the number of staff members in our admissions, philanthropy & alumni, and information technology services departments also tend to be smaller, thus, putting extra burden on the people who work within them.

Thankfully, it is my belief that the people who chose to work at places like TCS understand the disproportionate commitment required in a non-traditional work environment with responsibilities for the welfare of the children in our care.

Alas, despite the added challenges presented in running a small school, I believe, and my colleagues would agree, that it is well worth it. And I hope you would agree as well!

In summary, when it comes to schools, I hold the strong belief that smaller is better.