Junior education minister Sander Dekker has told parliament he has no intention of introducing legal limits on class sizes in Dutch schools.

Not the size of the class but the quality of the teaching and school leadership is key to good results and calm classrooms, the minister said in a briefing.

Teachers and school heads have been pressurising the education ministry to impose limits. The average primary school class has 23.3 pupils this year although 6% have more than 30 pupils, the minister said.

In secondary education class sizes vary from 21 in vocational training to an average of 27 in pre-college Havo streams.

Schools have enough money to ensure classes are ‘acceptable’, even if they have to make tough choices at times, Dekker said.