Mayor Bloomberg insisted yesterday that class size doesn’t matter in obtaining a quality education, pointing as proof to his own boyhood experience in large classes.

“I went to school in a class five rows by eight,” Bloomberg said. “Everyone in my generation went to classes of 40 or more, and education, by some people’s argument, was as good then as it is today.”

The mayor’s remarks came amid a wave of criticism aimed at his earlier comments that if he had the power he would fire half the teachers and double the salaries of those that remained.

Sol Stern, an education expert at the Manhattan Institute, called that idea “preposterous.”