Part two of a series of three blog posts

In last week’s blog I outlined the size and composition of the TCS student body. In this submission, I explain the rationale for our school’s strategic enrolment and grade level targets. In next week’s blog, I will discuss the impacts on school culture, ethos and programming here at the School.

To review, our Junior School student body includes approximately 100 day students from across the region. Our Senior School comprises approximately 500 students of which roughly 200 are day students and 300 are boarding students. Approximately 50% of our boarding students live in Canada while the other come from beyond our borders. (While my last blog posts includes exact student body numbers, please allow me to reference these approximate numbers for ease when discussing overall composition and balance.)

But, why is the school composed in this manner? Is it by design or a coincidence? Good question!

To be clear at the outset, it is not a coincidence. I will explain, but first, a bit of TCS history. TCS was originally founded as a “school for boys” in 1865 in Weston, Ontario. It moved to the small town of Port Hope in 1868; it was exclusively a boys’ boarding school. In the 1980s, the School began to grow its day student base in earnest, and girls were welcomed in 1991. Both of these adjustments to the student body were widely welcomed at the time, but not without their opponents.

At the risk of oversimplifying the rationale for the introduction of day students and girls, I would posit that a major factor in broadening the enrolment base was financial. Clearly, expanding the “pool” of student candidates, all things being well, would provide greater long-term sustainability for the School. This has proven true and, I would argue, both initiatives have made for a better school (and, I would be happy to expand upon this in a future blog!).

My intention in starting with the financial implications related to the rationale for our school size and composition is in the interests of transparency. It is important to recognize that TCS does not receive any government funding and that we are a not-for-profit business that relies solely on tuition and gifts to the School.

But let me return to why 100 students in the Junior School and 500 students in the Senior School. If expanding the student base to include day students and girls was the right decision financially, why not keep growing?

Contrary to popular belief, there is research to suggest that school size is at least as important as class size.

At the high school level, having a school size of 500 and a class size of approximately 15 students per class seems to be the “sweet spot.” Of course, there is nothing magical that guarantees school and student success with these targets, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that these are worthy goals. TCS takes the data on this issue seriously and has, and for the foreseeable future, continued to use these as enrolment targets.

And, at the elementary school level, or our Junior School, why is a smaller school better?  

Let’s talk elementary schools: The foundation for my position on smaller schools, I believe, is intuitive for educators and parents alike. Particularly after the last three academic COVID-impacted school years, we can fairly safely agree that kids need to be socially, academically and co-curricularly involved with other kids and caring adults! Being together and part of a community is critical to their social, emotional and intellectual growth. And, quite simply, the smaller the school the deeper the engagement between all humans. As educator and author Thomas J. Sergiovanni says, the “link between caring and learning is a tight one” (Leadership for the Schoolhouse, pg. 103). Kids and adults know one another’s names and “kids learn in communion. They listen to people who matter to them, and to whom they matter.” Sergiovanni adds, “relation…precedes any engagement with subject matter.”

In summary, he writes, “The smallest schools...were better at solving their problems, were more intellectually oriented, had more caring teachers, and had higher level of parent and student satisfaction.” Research cited in Sergiovanni’s book goes on to state, “The Report Card on American Education concluded, ‘…school size, not classroom size, was the key in the performance of students.’”

While on one hand, I would personally welcome a slightly larger Junior School – after all, anyone familiar with the Junior School will tell you that there is something really special about our Boulden House community! – I am also a strident proponent of small schools, particularly at the primary and elementary school levels.

What about high schools? The advantages of a high school size of 500 are also rooted in community and relationships. But, given the age and stage differences for adolescents, there are added advantages associated with leadership, healthy risk taking and what professor and educational critic Judith Kleinfeld (cited in Leadership for the Schoolhouse) terms “undermanned settings.” In short, “undermanned settings” are small schools, “where there are not enough people to fit all the roles that are available” so that “more is asked of everyone.” In these communities, generally, healthy “risk taking is more accepted,” “more opportunities for leadership become available,” and “one’s learning curve remains forever steep as new challenges must be accepted, and new ideas mastered.” The list of benefits goes on and on. And, I can confirm that we see these advantages demonstrated every day at our school.

Within the Canadian Accredited Independent Schools (CAIS) association, many of the schools that you would be familiar with have school sizes significantly larger than TCS. In fact, in the Toronto area, it is common for schools to have a total school enrolment of over 800 students, and even a couple with over 1,000.

So, TCS differentiates itself by size, intentionally, by design.

In next week’s blog, I outline what I see as the impacts of this differentiation.