Too many pupils, too little help?

Doing some work on education in the Heads of the Valleys area, where there are high levels of pupils who need extra support with their learning. And what do we find? There are MORE pupils per teacher in the area than the Welsh average. For example in primary schools there are 20.7 pupils per teacher compared with Welsh average of 19.9 pupils per teacher. This isn't a huge difference, granted, but when you then look at figures on free school meals (23.9% children in the Heads of the Valleys receive them compared with 16.1% across Wales as a whole), you might expect that there would be fewer pupils per teacher not more, so that they could get the help they need. Am looking into it more, so watch this space. More stats for the anoraks amongst you here: http://wales.gov.uk/topics/statistics/theme/spatial-plan/spatialplanareas/southeastwales/?a=0&lang=en