Children across the country are being taught in classes with more than 100 pupils amid a growing crisis over school funding, according to official figures.
The biggest secondary school class had 181 pupils, according to figures released to The Sunday Times under freedom of information laws. It was in Sutton, southwest London, while two other classes with more than 100 pupils were in Sefton, Merseyside (141) and Suffolk (135).
The figures, collected by counting the number of children in each class on a specific day in January, reveal 10 classes of 70 or more pupils and 52 classes with 50-plus students.
At primary school level, there were 14 schools with more than 40 pupils in a class. The largest primary school class was in Somerset,