EVOLVING PATTERNS OF CLASSROOM STAFFING INEQUALITY: A LONGITUDINAL ANALYSIS OF STUDENT–TEACHER RATIOS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE

Abstract

Staffing conditions in classrooms are directly correlated with the quality and equity of educational provision, butstudent-to-teacherratios can be viewed throughsystem-wideaverages and mask inequalities in schools and regions. We need alongitudinal view of these ratios todeterminehow they change and their unequal distribution. This study examinedtemporal patterns, geographic variation, and distributional inequality in student–teacher ratios as an indicator ofclassroom staffing conditions across public schools. A quantitative longitudinal design based on secondary data analysiswas employed, using school-level records from2017–18to2024–25.After data cleaning and filtering, the final analyticalsample consisted of 18,118 observations. Descriptivestatistics, trend analysis, county-level comparisons, and coefficientof variation were used to assess patterns and inequality, alongside one-way ANOVA and Kruskal–Wallis tests for year-wise differences. The mean student–teacher ratio was 14.07 (SD = 5.09), with substantial variability and a positivelyskewed distribution, indicating that a subset of schools experienced disproportionately high staffing pressure. Temporally,the ratio declined from 15.17 in2017–18to 13.14 in2020–21,followed by a gradualincrease to 14.11 in2024–25.Geographic disparities were pronounced, and inequality peaked in2020–21,remaining elevated thereafter. Differencesacross years were statistically significant, though the effect size was small. Classroom staffing conditionswere thus unevenacross schools, years, and regions, highlighting the importance of interpreting student–teacher ratios as indicators ofdistributional inequality rather than simple averages.