Becoming increasingly convinced that primary education should ensure everyone masters basic skills, and then provide pupils a lot of options to choose from according to their own interests. If schools were large in size, they could more easily provide more options to choose from.
@LeoSammallahti At least in the USA, options are dependent upon funding, not size. Public school funding comes from both public and private sources. Thus public schools with wealthier student pools have more options than schools with poor student pools.
Smaller schools are much more socially integrated than larger schools, which benefits the students much more.
The biggest driver of large school size is typically sports. A bigger talent pool wins state championships.
@lwriemen
Good points - I was thinking from a Finnish perspective where there is a state monopoly on primary education, so all schools receive roughly the same amount of funding.