"(ملف 19/248 I (C 78 التعليم في البحرين" [و‎‎٦‎٢] (٤٩٤/١٤٠)

6
The third cause of inefficiency is Overcrowded Classes.
The classes in most of the schools are far too large. It is impossible
adequately to teach 40 boys in a single class—especially when those boys are
very young. Yet some of the classes regularly contain more than twice that
number. At Muharraq School, for example, there are actually 140 infants
on the register of the lowest class, aud between 80 and 90 of them are
regular attendants. How can the instruction of a class of this size be
anything but a farce ?
The chief cause of overcrowding in the classes is to be found in the
large numbers of Atfal, or infants, attending the schools. These babies,
many of them too young to be at school at all, and sent there simply for the
convenience of their parents, usually take up the two lowest classes, and the
whole of the rest of the pupils have thus to be crammed into the remaining
four—I am speaking now of the three larger schools, Manamah, Muharraq,
and Hedd. In some of the village schools the conditions are worse : at
Sitra, for example, where the school consists of a single room, there are
again 140 names on the register 1
Later in this Report, and as a remedy for a different evil, I am recom
mending your Highness completely to remove the Atfal from the schools
of Manamah, Muharraq, and Hedd, and to house them in entirely separate
Infants' Schools. If this is done, the overcrowding of the classes in three
of the schools (Manamah. Muharraq, and Hedd) will be solved, for after
the removal of the infants, who now occupy the two bottom classes at each
school, it will be possible to distribute the rest of the boys over six classes
instead of four. As to the other four schools, I am recommending later in
this Report that they be enlarged.