Notes:
- Status Quo: Represents the estimated current Experienced Class Size (ECS), calculated as the average of school-level ECS values.
- Scenario 1 (Learners → Classes Allocation Optimisation): Learners within each grade are allocated optimally to classes, redistributing learners as evenly as possible across the current number of classes for that grade in each school. This reflects potential gains from balancing class sizes within grades without changing teacher allocation.
- Scenario 2 (Classes → Grades Allocation Optimisation): Builds on Scenario 1. Classes within each school are allocated optimally to grades, where the total number of classes currently existing in a school are optimally re-allocated across different grades within that same school to minimize the school's ECS. This reflects gains from flexible teacher deployment across grades.
- Scenario 3 (Classrooms → Classes Allocation Optimisation): Builds on Scenario 2. Classrooms are allocated to classes, where the number of classes is constrained by the minimum of available teachers or available classrooms per school. Crucially: Classroom data is sourced from the School Monitoring Survey (SMS) 2017, which covers only a subset of schools. The percentage reduction achieved for this subset is calculated using SMS sampling weights (LEARNERWGT) and then applied to the overall Status Quo ECS. This approach assumes the reduction potential observed in the SMS sample is representative of the entire population.
Teacher counts for Scenario 3: Surplus teachers, weighted by school sampling weights (SchoolWgt), are estimated on the SMS subset and extrapolated to the full population by scaling with teacher totals at this level (weighted SMS surplus × total teachers ÷ weighted SMS teachers). - Scenario 4 (Teachers → Classes Allocation Optimisation): Builds on Scenario 2 (ignores Scenario 3's classroom constraint for this step). Teachers within each school are allocated optimally to classes, where all teachers assigned to the school are utilized optimally across grades (as calculated in `06_optimise_schools.R`), potentially forming more classes than the status quo if teachers were previously underutilized, to minimize ECS.
- Scenario 5 (District Teachers → School Allocation Optimisation): Builds on Scenario 4. District teachers are allocated optimally to schools, where teachers are optimally reallocated between schools but only within the same education district to minimize the district's overall ECS.
- Scenario 6 (Provincial Teachers → Schools Allocation Optimisation): Builds on Scenario 5. Provincial teachers are allocated optimally to schools, where teachers are optimally reallocated between schools across the entire province to minimize the province's overall ECS.
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