Studio notes: what twelve students taught us about class size

For two terms we ran ceramics with sixteen places instead of twelve. The economics were obviously better. We stopped anyway.

The thing that broke was not attention — our tutors managed sixteen people fine. It was the kiln. Sixteen students make roughly a third more work, and a shared kiln schedule that was comfortable became a queue. Students waited longer to see results, and the feedback loop that makes the course work stretched from days to weeks.

Twelve is not a philosophy. It is what fits the kiln.