Bullock (1975)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Foreword, Membership, Contents, Introduction

Part 1 Attitudes and standards
Chapter 1 Attitudes to the teaching of English
Chapter 2 Standards of reading
Chapter 3 Monitoring

Part 2 Language in the early years
Chapter 4 Language and learning
Chapter 5 Language in the early years

Part 3 Reading
Chapter 6 The reading process
Chapter 7 Reading in the early years
Chapter 8 Reading: the later stages
Chapter 9 Literature

Part 4 Language in the middle and secondary years
Chapter 10 Oral language
Chapter 11 Written language
Chapter 12 Language across the curriculum

Part 5 Organisation
Chapter 13 The primary and middle years
Chapter 14 Continuity between schools
Chapter 15 The secondary school
Chapter 16 LEA advisory services

Part 6 Reading and language difficulties
Chapter 17 Screening, diagnosis and recording
Chapter 18 Children with reading difficulties
Chapter 19 Adult literacy
Chapter 20 Children from families of overseas origin

Part 7 Resources
Chapter 21 Books
Chapter 22 Technological aids and broadcasting

Part 8 Teacher education and training
Chapter 23 Initial training
Chapter 24 In-service education

Part 9 The survey
Chapter 25: I Introduction
Chapter 25: II Primary commentary
Chapter 25: III Secondary commentary
Chapter 25: IV The questionnaire forms (not online)
Chapter 25: V Technical notes (not online)

Part 10 Sumary of conclusions and recommendations
Chapter 26 Conclusions and recommendations

Appendix A Witnesses and sources of evidence
Appendix B Visits made
Glossary
Index

Report of the Committee of Enquiry appointed by the Secretary of State for Education and Science under the Chairmanship of Sir Alan Bullock FBA

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1975
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Chapter 15 The secondary school
[pages 220 - 237]

15.1 We suggested earlier that since language pervades the curriculum there is no place for specialisation in English in the primary school. We also suggested that liaison between primary and secondary school should be so close as to allow the child to go on perceiving English as a continuous experience without sharp breaks. Our visits to schools led us to conclude that this is all too rarely achieved. On transfer the majority of children move into a situation where work in English is abruptly separated from all their other activities. In recent years there has been much talk of 'breaking subject barriers' and 'new integrated approaches', particularly with reference to first and second year pupils and those in their last year of statutory schooling. The intention in the case of the former is to reduce the sense of fragmentation in the minds of pupils who have always been accustomed to one teacher for most of the working day. Sometimes the practice is for the form tutor to take them for several subjects, of which English is one. Sometimes the teachers of a number of subjects (e.g. history, geography, religious education, social studies, English) work together as a team and jointly plan the course. This kind of organisation is variously interpreted, and it ranges from a situation where the subjects are linked in a loose interrelationship to one in which they lose definition altogether. Occasionally it is the practice to timetable one or two additional periods of English separately. With the fourth year pupils the purpose of 'integration' is usually to provide courses that school leavers might find relevant and attractive, and this generally means the involvement of several teachers in one or other variation of the pattern just mentioned.

15.2 When such arrangements have been discussed English has almost invariably been one of the subjects assumed to be an obvious participant. Perhaps unexpectedly, therefore, we found that 93 per cent of the twelve year olds in our sample were taught English as a separately timetabled subject. Only 7 per cent experienced it in the context of one or another form of integrated studies. The figures for the fourteen year olds were similar at 94 per cent and 6 per cent respectively. Our sample pupils did not include eleven year olds, and the survey could not therefore identify situations where children were timetabled for integrated studies in their first year before passing to specialist English in their second. However, since only 2 per cent of the schools organised English as part of a 'multi-subject' department it seems likely that most of the eleven year olds went straight into 'specialist' English. It is necessary to qualify the term 'specialist' before we go any further, since it cannot be taken to mean that they necessarily receive their English at the hands of a teacher with qualifications in the subject. Indeed, our survey showed that one third of the teachers teaching some English in secondary schools had no such qualifications, a point to which we return later.

15.3 We must begin our brief evaluation of integration and specialisation by pointing out that we are concerned here only with its effects upon the teaching of English. Our remit does not take us as far as an examination of its value in general terms, though we would suggest that for integration to be successful it must take place in the mind of the child and not remain a notion in the mind of the teacher. An arrangement we encountered in our visits to schools was one in which each form tutor takes the pupils for several subjects, including English. Unfortunately, although they may be responsible for four or five subjects many of the teachers do not attempt to 'integrate' them, but teach them as separate entities. Whether or not they are successful depends to a very large extent on the support and guidance they receive from heads of department. A teacher whose training and background is in another subject often lacks any knowledge of children's literature and any acquaintance with current ideas about language development. It is a serious disservice to him and to the pupils to allocate him a course book, a poetry anthology, and some sets of class readers and assume he can take it from there. Only by being drawn into the life and thinking of the English department can he be properly sustained. This exposes a fundamental problem of the arrangement by which the form tutor teaches several subjects, for what applies to English applies equally to the others. A teacher cannot be expected to make himself an integral part of several separate departments without a great deal of help.

15.4 Where integrated studies are taught by a team of teachers from a number of subject areas there are varying degrees of sophistication in the way of working. Perhaps the commonest is where they decide upon a theme which will occupy a given number of weeks and through which the various subject interests will find expression. It is often launched by a 'key lesson', or audio-visual presentation, at which the whole year group is present. In the weeks that follow the pupils work in groups or individually with assignment cards or work sheets, which the teachers have cooperated to prepare. In principle this and similar forms of cooperative arrangement hold much more promise than the one we described above. They must, however, be able to stand up to the same kind of question if the school is to be certain that the teaching of English is not to suffer. The plain truth is that before any school makes a decision on whether English should be integrated in some way or taught separately there are several questions it must ask itself. If English is to be associated with three or four other subjects what is likely to be the effect upon the pupil's experience of oral and written language? Will this experience be restricted or expanded by the demands of the other constituents? Will the teachers be able to create situations in which literature illuminates the other elements in the course and in turn gains a dimension from them? How well equipped are the teachers to handle what becomes an exacting situation? It has been argued against such a form of organisation that it weakens the control of the learning process, that it leaves to chance what could otherwise be guaranteed. It has also been suggested that the experience it embodies lacks depth and any true organic quality. The pupils' writing becomes narrow in range, with the factual predominating and the imaginative finding little place. Literature tends to be either neglected or bent to conform with the dictates of the other components. As one of our witnesses put it, 'There is a danger that the poem or story can be subtly distorted because it is used as an illustration of a pre-announced theme, whereas in reality, if its true nature were attended to, it would have to be recognised as more complex, and indeed multi-thematic rather than mono-thematic. There is a danger also that the poem or story may be used as a starting off point for discussion or writing rather than valued as an experience in itself, a situation which may lead to overemphasis on material which is moved through quickly en route to another goal, rather than on material which is dwelt on, savoured, and fully enjoyed'. There is much substance in such objections, and in the even more serious one that the teachers involved may lack any knowledge of English teaching. For example, we visited schools where the first and second years experienced English only in the context of humanities but where the involvement of a teacher of English was quite fortuitous. In one or two such instances the head of English department was outside the arrangement to the point of not knowing what the children were encountering in the way of English during those two years; his responsibility began when the pupils entered the third year. We cannot emphasise too strongly the need for strong specialist representation where English is part of an integrated programme, whatever form this may take.

15.5 But if English can lack identity in such schemes it is not immune from a lack of purpose when taught in its own right. This occurs when it is not backed by a well thought out policy, by a unifying intention which has emerged from a sense of direction worked out in staff discussions. This lack of clearly understood purpose reveals itself in the separate development of the various 'compartments', the writing being unrelated to the talk, the talk to the literature. It is often manifest in the written work, where there is a 'bittiness', a lack of a supporting framework, a sense of the piece existing in a vacuum. We believe, then, that to divide the English programme into a number of compartments, unrelated and separated by timetable boundaries, is a very limiting procedure. At the same time we must acknowledge that the abandonment of this practice, though an immense gain for well-organised and imaginative teachers, has sometimes left others without a sense of direction. In such cases there is a confusion about how a teacher is to devise a sequence of activity that will fulfil his aims and give the pupils a sense of purpose. This is a matter in which the head of department's leadership is of vital importance, and it is one of the main reasons for the prominence we give later in the chapter to the development of an 'instrument of policy'.

15.6 We regard the opposition of specialised English and integrated studies as a false issue, for it is evading the fundamentals to regard them as mutually exclusive. These fundamentals can be reduced quite simply to objective planning. Specialist areas of interest exist whether they remain separate or are 'folded into' others, and the school has to decide what are its objectives for each. What is needed as a basic principle is not that English should necessarily claim for itself 'separate development' but that it should truly inform the other areas of interest. If it becomes part of an integrated scheme it must retain a valid presence, sustained by specialist knowledge and adequate resources. This means that the kind of work described in Chapters 9, 10 and 11 must be represented to the same extent and in the same depth as if English were taught separately. If it is timetabled as a separate subject it must reach out to other areas of interest, drawing upon them for its material through close cooperation with the teachers concerned. Our own view is that there should be other forms of working than two straight alternatives. For example, certain aspects of the work might emerge from the integrated pattern, crystallise outside its context, form the subject of separate study, and then be re-immersed. The theme described in paragraph 9.6 is an illustration of this. Without proper planning such a topic would depend upon information books for its associated reading. But if the literature is expertly assembled it can come into its own outside the programme, gaining from the context in which it was first introduced and contributing to it by return.

15.7 We are not prepared to recommend a simple organisational solution which would imply that a given structure will solve the various problems. It is spirit, clear aims, understanding, and planning that achieve the results, and none of these is the automatic by-product of a system of organisation. We believe that talk is more fluent, writing more committed, and reading more avid when English in seen as a complex and organic interaction between them and the whole range of the child's experience. The decision that faces the school is how best to bring this interaction about in the light of its own particular circumstances.

15.8 We gave close consideration to suggestions made to us that reading might be taught by a separate 'specialised' approach. It was argued by some witnesses that since there is a hierarchy of reading skills it is illogical to confine the specialist teaching to those pupils who are still experiencing difficulty with the most fundamental of them. We have considered the merits of this argument in Chapter 8 and do not feel able to support the notion of separate and specialised teaching of reading. However, we believe that if it is not to exist in this form there must be firm measures to ensure that its positive features are available in equivalent strength. This means that every teacher must be able and prepared to teach children to read within his own subject. We have recommended that this should form a part of teacher training, and in the meantime it calls for support within the schools. At present most schools have no policy for developing reading across the curriculum, and English departments do not see it as one of their functions. We believe that the English department should consider the development of reading skills at all levels and in all its aspects as one of its most important responsibilities. As part of the school's policy for language across the curriculum it should offer guidance in the extension of this ability in all the pupil's learning activities. For this purpose it is desirable there should be at least one member of staff with advanced qualifications in reading. The effect of modern approaches in many subjects is to put a higher premium than ever on the ability to read. There is increasing use of assignment cards and work-sheets. All too often these and the tasks they prescribe make no allowance for individual differences in reading ability, and the advice given to subject departments should include a concern for readability levels in the material being used.

15.9 In the section on drama we suggested that secondary schools should ponder in relation to their own circumstances whether it should be taught as part of English or within a separate department. We hinted a third possibility: that both practices might exist in combination. 84 per cent of the secondary schools in our sample taught drama 'as part of the work of the English department'. We have already made clear our views on the value of drama for language development, and where drama is integrated with English the link can be exploited at will by the teacher who is responsible for both. On the other hand complete integration has real practical difficulties, not the least of which is that many excellent teachers of English are unqualified by training, experience, or temperament to handle improvised drama. Further, there are good arguments for the separate existence of drama to provide a run of time when its themes and developments can be pursued in their own terms. This is particularly true for the older adolescent years, and in our visits we saw some splendid dramatic work with fourth and fifth year pupils in separate drama options. Ideally, then, we would recommend that in the secondary school drama should be an essential part of work in English while at the same time having scope as an activity in its own right. If constraints of time, staffing, or accommodation rule this out we would urge that there should be compensatory measures. For instance, where drama exists only within the English department one of its members should be appropriately qualified and carry the responsibility of supporting and advising his colleagues. If drama has come to be concentrated within a separate department it is of the utmost importance that the teachers involved in it should work in very close cooperation with the English department. In either case, the teachers responsible should look for opportunities to relate drama to pupils' work in other areas of the curriculum.

15.10 We have been discussing various aspects of the position of English as a specialist area and must now pursue the fundamentals of objectives and planning. First, the question of pupil grouping. It is not part of our brief to assess the respective general merits of various forms of grouping, such as streaming, setting, broad banding, and mixed ability. That issue has, in any case, been exhaustively discussed elsewhere, and our concern here is confined to the implications for English of certain of the variations. Diagram 10 shows the distribution of pupil groupings for the teaching of English in our sample secondary schools. It will be seen that the practice of mixed ability teaching, comparatively uncommon in secondary schools at one time, has become fairly widespread, especially for the twelve year olds. 18 per cent were in groups which drew from the whole of the school's ability range, while another 14 per cent were in groups which excluded only the 'remedial' pupils. Speaking purely for English, most of us have reservations about arrangements by which pupils are streamed or setted according to ability. However careful the process, classifying individuals in this way makes different pupils in the same group seem more similar than they are, and similar pupils in different groups seem more different than they are. Moreover, we believe that even if it were possible to grade children accurately according to language ability it would be to deprive the less able of the stimulus they so badly need. Less commonly acknowledged, but equally important, is the fact that it would steadily deprive the more able of opportunities to communicate with the linguistically less accomplished. Of course, the actual effect in the classroom of mixed ability grouping varies widely according to the spectrum of ability within the school's intake. Such a group in an inner city area is very different from one in a suburban area. A good deal also depends on the size of the group (for example, there is a great difference between a mixed ability class of 20 pupils and one of 30) and on such factors as accommodation and the pastoral organisation of the school.

15.11 Before a school decides to adopt this kind of grouping for the teaching of English there are a number of questions it has to ask itself, of which the following are merely examples. How can the children with serious reading difficulties be given the kind of individual help they require within a class totally mixed in ability? Is it proposed to withdraw them for at least part of the time, or alternatively to have additional teachers in the classroom to give support? Is there a risk that the small group interaction so valuable in English will be lost in favour of almost continuous individual activity? How can the shared study of pieces of writing, and particularly full length works, be managed with so wide a range of ability? The first and second of these questions are of particular importance, and mixed ability grouping should certainly not be introduced until the school has worked out detailed plans in response to it. Indeed, we are bound to express our own reservations about the kind of grouping which goes so far as to include children who are experiencing difficulties of this kind. The third question is fundamental to an understanding of the complex organisation required if this kind of grouping is to be successful. In some of the mixed ability classes we visited the children were being taught as if they were a homogeneous group, much of their experience being direct class teaching aimed at the middle of the range. In others the work was so finely individualised that the class rarely came together for a collective experience. Between these extremes were examples of imaginative planning to give the pupils a variety of learning experiences. The plain truth is that mixed ability teaching requires sound classroom control of the pupils, and considerable skill in teaching and the organisation of learning resources. The above questions raise issues about which misgivings were expressed in the evidence we received. These can be seen in the words of a witness who in principle was warmly in favour of mixed ability teaching:

'The full nature of the problem may perhaps be brought home by a reminder that in a first year secondary school class containing the full range of ability, the English teacher may encounter an extraordinarily wide spread in reading age (e.g. from seven to fourteen), and an accompanying wide divergence in maturity of reading interest and taste ... What may tend to happen is a concentration, sometimes unnoticed, on these areas of English teaching (talk, dramatisation, writing) in which divergence of reading level is minimised, and in which, therefore, the mixed ability class can be held together as a cohesive unit, within which groups are at any rate doing related things, even if not necessarily doing the same things at the same time'. 'What often seems to go unrecognised ... is the really massive and massively varied provision of books which is absolutely essential if the class library is genuinely to meet the needs of a secondary class of fully mixed ability'.

15.13 As we have said, the more complex the teaching arrangements the more is demanded of the teachers in terms of skill, organising ability, and knowledge of resources. This takes us to the question of the supply of qualified English teachers, a matter to which we made brief reference earlier in the chapter. English teaching has been fortunate in the quality of the people taking it up since the war. It has attracted men and women of ability and energy with a wide range of interests and a commitment to young people and social improvements. Nevertheless, the staffing situation is not a happy one, and in our enquiries we found that schools were experiencing many difficulties. For one thing there is too great a mobility of teachers, a problem which English shares with other subjects. 11 per cent of our sample were in their first year of teaching, and 24 per cent in their first year in their present school. This has disquieting implications for continuity of teaching and the development of English department policy. In our opinion, English is a field which has a particular need of continuity, since so much depends upon the teacher's observation and nurture of his pupil's language growth. Measured against this need the turnover figures give cause for concern. Furthermore, just under one tenth of the teachers of English in our sample were part-time. There is no doubt of the value of their contribution, but we think it unsatisfactory that so substantial a proportion of the teachers responsible for English should not be in school for the full week. Not only is this kind of arrangement another source of discontinuity but it adds to the problems of a head of English who is trying to develop within the department a policy of continuing dialogue and collective planning.

15.14 We approach with some diffidence the analysis of formal qualifications among teachers of English, as we are aware of the excellent work done by many who do not possess them. Moreover, we are equally aware that the supposedly appropriate qualifications are not always suitable for the task. These reservations made, we find the distribution of qualifications in Table 11 considerably disturbing.

The final figure is the most striking; a third of those involved in English teaching have no discernible qualification for the role*. Of course, many of these may well be teaching English to only one or two classes, spending most of their time in some other subject. But this in itself is a significant feature and another disquieting aspect of the situation. Of the teachers engaged in English, only 37 per cent spent all their time on it. 25 per cent were teaching it more than half their time, and 38 per cent less than half:

(An expansion of this distribution, giving a more detailed breakdown of the data by size and type of school, is to be found in Table 70, Chapter 25).

*It should be noted that this was the figure supplied by heads to indicate the qualifications of all the teachers in their schools who were teaching English. In the class section of the questionnaire we directed the question specifically to the teachers taking English with the sample twelve and fourteen year old pupils. Details of their replies are given in Tables 77 and 78.

15.15 Considerations of this kind depend in large measure on the degree of priority accorded to English by the head of the school, and its status is reflected in the construction of the timetable. For example, the disposition of total time affects the length of the English sessions, their placing across the week, and whether or not the English of a group of classes is 'blocked', i.e. taught simultaneously. There is a wide variation from school to school in the extent to which the English department is consulted on those three questions, and in the extent to which its wishes can be met. Nevertheless, the impression we carried away from our visits and our discussions with teachers was that English very often has a lower priority than other subjects. It is expected to make fewer and simpler timetable demands, and those demands it does make are less often met. Any firm request from any subject for a particular use of time is a constraint upon the timetable. One example is a generous allocation of double periods; another is the 'blocking' to which we referred above. The latter is a difficult requirement to meet too often in a timetable, as it demands that a number of teachers must all be available at the same time. In most schools the number of such 'vertical locks' the timetable can carry is acutely limited, and English faces the problem that many other subjects have traditionally become accepted as having greater claim on this and similar timetable constraints. French and mathematics, for instance, usually demand setting and thus frequently exhaust the school's blocking capacity, while science and craft make heavy claims on double periods. Some subjects need to be taught in specially equipped rooms, and they inevitably take an early place in the timetabler's thoughts.

15.16 All these factors, singly or in combination, often put English at a disadvantage when the timetable is being constructed. One or two illustrations will be sufficient to show how this can work in practice. We visited one large school which worked an eight period day. Whereas every other subject had double periods, mathematics requested single periods and setting. To permit this, English was always timetabled in singles and paired with mathematics to make 'false doubles'. Thus, English always preceded or followed a lesson change, and though it felt the need for double periods as acutely as the other subject did for singles it never had a longer spell of time than 35 minutes. (Almost 40 per cent of the twelve year olds in our survey sample had none of their lessons in periods of more than an hour). A similar conflict of interests was seen in another school, where staff availability was a problem when the fourth year 'GCE band' was being setted. The outcome of the situation was that the four English sets were constituted according to the pupils' ability in mathematics. We found it a common practice for English to be used to fill in the single periods left over at odd times of the week. In a number of schools which allocated English five periods it was said to be 'not possible' for one class to have all five with the same teacher. Indeed, we found one school in which a few classes had three teachers each for their English. It must be added at once that we met heads who went to very great trouble to accord to English the same timetabling advantages as any other subject. Nevertheless, our general impression was that in too many schools English was used by the timetabler as the lubricant that allowed other subjects to slip into their favoured place. We strongly urge that English should be given a high priority when heads are devising their staffing and timetabling policy.

15.17 For the reasons we have given, and others we shall go on to adduce, the role of the head of the school in the teaching of English has never been so important. One measure of it is the support he gives to his head of English department, and this includes securing him time for the thought and planning the task demands. In recent years the role of the head of department has grown in complexity. Not only has the subject increased in scope and widely diversified, but greater flexibility has been required of it to meet individual needs and interests. This demands of the head of department a much wider knowledge of available books and materials and of developments in teaching methods. In effect his responsibility extends from the management of resources to a concern for the in-service training needs of the department. His relationship with his colleagues is the key to the success of English teaching in the school. As one witness put it, 'I see the role of head of department as concerned first of all with teachers. Unless he can lead his department so that it is a unity I don't think one can progress very far'.

15.18 Our visits left us in no doubt how demanding a job this is, especially in large schools. The problems we have been describing were common to very many of the heads of English we met. They were experiencing considerable pressures, and they had insufficient time and help available to them. Despite this, the majority were managing remarkably well and were succeeding in developing a strong team approach. These included teachers who had had to cope with the sudden expansion of their department as a small school became a large one on reorganisation. Inevitably, however, this situation produced problems to which some were not so readily able to adjust. Accustomed to working with two or three colleagues and with children from a restricted ability range, they found themselves with problems on a daunting scale. The pupils were now drawn from almost the entire ability range, and the staff of the department became a heterogeneous collection of teachers with widely differing views on how English should be taught. Equally under pressure were some heads of departments who had been virtually catapulted into promotion after only a short period of teaching. Their intelligence, energy, and ambitions for their subject often outstripped their experience, resources, and strength. This situation has resulted in some areas from the extreme difficulty of finding heads of English department. Candidates with reasonable experience and qualifications are in very short supply for a number of reasons. Apart from the more general one of a shortage of qualified teachers of English, these have included a variety of attractions into other fields. For one thing there is a well-documented tendency for arts teachers in general, and English teachers in particular, to be drawn to middle and senior pastoral posts. As one writer (1) expresses it: 'Scientists feel that they have more to lose by moving into the pastoral area, whereas arts teachers, in moving in that direction, feel that they are extending interests and skills that have been important to them in their teaching function'. Other reasons that have been put to us are the growing opportunities for the teaching of English as a second language, the attraction of posts in further education, and the increased appeal among English graduates of teaching in primary schools.

15.19 Advisers, heads, and LEA officers in various parts of the country, but above all in inner-city areas, told us of their difficulty in appointing heads of English departments. Some said it was not uncommon to have to advertise three or four times for one good candidate. Another factor which is operating is the effect of the 1971 Burnham salary structure, which has been to narrow the differentials. The highest post (Scale 5) that can be awarded to a head of department can be acquired in, for instance, a grammar school of 600 or a comprehensive school of 1,000. Beyond that the financial reward remains the same, however large the school, except in the few cases where a small 'senior teacher' allowance is allocated. This is, of course, a problem common to all subjects, but it seems to have been felt particularly acutely by English, which shares with mathematics the largest teacher period loading in the school. In large schools of up to 2,000 the number of teachers involved in the teaching of English is often very considerable. It has to be acknowledged that experienced heads of department in medium-sized schools are often deterred from taking on the additional responsibility in larger schools by the absence of any further salary gain. We are not in a position to recommend that English be singled out for special treatment in the form of an increased differential. On the other hand, to make a recommendation that would include all subject departments would take us beyond our terms of reference. Nevertheless, we feel it necessary to draw attention in urgent terms to the general problem of appointing heads of English department in some areas and to the particular one facing large schools. Quite apart from the matter of financial reward there are various steps that could be taken to ease the difficulty for heads of English department who are subject to considerable pressure. The staffing ratio of the department should be improved to allow more time for consultation and planning. There should be a generous allocation of above-scale posts to allow the head of department to delegate effectively, and he should be given secretarial and ancillary help. We are aware of the many and various staffing demands that heads have to reconcile, but we urge that they give sympathetic consideration to the first two of these suggestions. The fulfilment of the third, to which we now turn, lies with the local authority.

15.20 In our discussions with heads of English department, clerical help emerged as one of the needs they felt most keenly; and yet only 8 per cent of the schools in our sample had any such help for the exclusive use of their English department. In our view the improvement likely to result from this relatively modest addition to the resources would be out of all proportion to the cost. We offer the analogy of the assistants available to science departments, and frequently to art and craft departments. It has long been accepted, for instance, that in the science laboratory ancillary help is required with the organisation of 'the teaching materials'. The same is no less necessary for English, the 'materials' of which are duplicated sheets, press clippings, files, photographs, and so on. A simple distinction can be made between two kinds of ancillary help. Firstly, there is the preparation of teaching material - typing, duplicating, mounting illustrations, and other aspects of reprographic work. Into this category also comes the preparation of audio-visual material - recordings, slides, overhead projector transparencies, etc. Secondly, there is the handling of existing or purchased material: ordering, receiving, accessing, issuing, stock checking, and progress chasing. This is an exacting enough job for printed books, but it becomes much greater when there is a continuing demand for ephemeral or occasional material. An English department requires help of both kinds, the first of which might well be offered centrally through a school resource centre. The advantage of this arrangement would be that it meets the need of a reprographic unit to have a constant 'through-put'. The management of audio-visual resources is discussed in a subsequent chapter, but we would emphasise here that whatever form the provision takes the needs of English must be met with no less readiness than if the department managed its own. We strongly recommend that every English department should have internal ancillary help of the second kind. The extent of the provision would depend on the degree of central help available for the preparation of materials, for if this were not available the department's own ancillary assistance would need to be increased. Assuming the existence of such central support we believe that a minimum of 20 hours' 'internal' assistance a week should be authorised for every five forms of entry in an 11-18 school, and pro rata.

15.21 Another important influence on the achievements of an English department is accommodation. One of the side-effects of the notion that 'Every teacher is a teacher of English' has been its extension to 'Any room is suitable for English'. Many heads to whom we spoke recognised the fallacy of this assumption and took great pains to avoid it when drawing up the room timetable. In some schools, however, it was obvious that English was deemed to have no requirements that could not be answered by any classroom that happened to be free. One timetable we studied placed a first year teacher in six different rooms for his English teaching. An even more extreme case was that of a large comprehensive school where one of the teachers taught 37 periods out of 40 in 13 different rooms. Not only was he constantly moving about the school, but he did not even have the same room for one class throughout the week. These are instances of inadequate concern for the needs of English teaching and of subsequent unsatisfactory timetabling. We have deliberately chosen them as extreme examples, and we do not, of course, assert that such practice is widespread. The survey provided us with an opportunity to discover the pattern across our sample of schools, and the result was as follows:

It is quite clear from this table that a substantial proportion of English teachers - over one third - are itinerant within the school, carrying their books about with them from one lesson to another. Even where they have the use of a regular room for their English lessons, this is by no means necessarily one designated as an English room. Thus, many teachers are unable to establish an environment in which they can exhibit work, put up illustrations and posters, mount displays and models etc. We regard this as unsatisfactory, and believe that all English teachers should have the stability that is so essential to the kind of work we envisage. We acknowledge that some schools make it a policy to keep pupils of the most recent intake in one room to give them the security of a home base. This is clearly a case in which there would have to be compromise to the principle we are suggesting, and there will be others like it. Nevertheless, we believe it important to establish the principle that the English department should have accommodation of its own which the teachers working within it share, and which can afford every member with a full programme of English a teaching base of his own.

15.22 Our visits convinced us that where a teacher was assured of this stability he had a much better chance of creating the right atmosphere and fulfilling his plans. One of our teacher witnesses urged that 'English should be taught exclusively in rooms resourced, looked after and seen to be the responsibility of the English department'. We support this principle, while acknowledging that some schools will find advantages in a degree of shared accommodation not only within a department but between subjects. As a basic tenet we strongly recommend that when rooms are being allocated the needs of English should receive the same consideration as those of any other subject. We apply the same recommendation to the planning of new accommodation, to the implications of which we now turn.

15.23 By comparison with some other subjects the space, furniture, and equipment required for activities in English might appear at first sight to present few problems. But a closer examination makes it clear that the demands on space are not at all simple and that though the special requirements are less obvious they are no less real. We talked to many English teachers and studied expressions of opinion from several other sources, and though they differed in emphasis and detail they all centred upon the need for better space provision. This is where our own priority lies. In our visits to schools rarely did we see pupils with the space to spread their papers, or the degree of 'psychological insulation' for individual reading and writing that adults would expect for themselves. Group work requires the space to allow tables and chairs to be rearranged into clusters. Discussion operates best when the pupils are sitting round a group of tables or in a horseshoe of chairs. These examples alone - and they are chosen as the most obvious - indicate how important to English teaching is generous space. The first essential is for the flexibility which allows the teachers a number of options. It should be possible for a teacher to spend a major part of his time in his own base. It should also be possible for a group of teachers to share a cluster of spaces which are adapted to the needs of varying activities and varying numbers of pupils. In most existing buildings this would be hard to achieve without structural alteration, but we found several schools which were attempting to group their English rooms to create a suite. It is a commendable measure which makes possible cooperative activity, the easy sharing of equipment and facilities, and ready access to what might be called the department's headquarters.

15.24 If the grouping of English rooms is considered in relation to other subject groupings the possibilities of shared facilities are increased. It is in such circumstances that we see the place for a projection theatre capable of seating a hundred or so children. This should be fitted with soundproof projector booth, wired-in good quality speakers, and a large permanent screen. Another facility of value to the English department, on the same shared basis, is a sound recording studio. High quality recording is difficult in even the best equipped classroom, for this is an activity that requires 'laboratory' conditions if it is to do justice to some aspects of the oral language work it is designed to serve. Drama in a secondary school can operate in a variety of forms and at a variety of levels. The fundamental need is for the kind of space a teacher can use for informal work and improvisation, and since this often develops naturally from other activities it must be a space immediately to hand. In addition there should be a larger and more elaborately equipped area which is shared with other subjects. Elsewhere in the Report we have advocated the use of film and videotape in such circumstances as to make them a part of the normal texture of lessons. If this is to happen it must be possible to bring the equipment into the room easily and without fuss, and if necessary at short notice. This becomes a much simpler matter if the English rooms are en suite, with the equipment shared between them, and ideally, certain of the rooms should have the equipment built in. This recommendation is not in conflict with our expectation that shared accommodation might include the use of a projection theatre. There is a good case for a school to be equipped with a facility of this kind and for English teachers to have access to it, particularly when they want to show a full-length film. But there is also a case for independent facilities if videotape and film, notably in the form of short extracts, are to be used as part of the normal lesson situation in the way we have suggested in Chapter 22.

15.25 We believe one of the most pressing needs of English teachers is a departmental centre to house the ancillary help we have recommended and the teaching material the department assembles or produces. Many English departments have serious problems of storage and retrieval for even their most modest requirements, let alone the more elaborate resources we should like to see developed. We have already pointed out that in addition to books much use is made by many teachers of press clippings, photographs, printed extracts, and all manner of ephemeral material. Moreover, the books themselves are moved about more freely than in the past, when it was common for a teacher to be issued with a course book and one or two other full sets, which he might keep for a term or even a year. What is required is a departmental centre which houses stock and catalogues of material and has the facilities for the ancillary helper to maintain them. Correspondingly, every English teaching room should have ample storage space. In our visits we found that many teachers were handicapped by the lack of it, and makeshift arrangements were quite common. In one school a teacher had to store his books in a small cloakroom under the stairs; in another they were kept in cupboards some distance from the classrooms. And surprisingly, in several of the schools we visited the classrooms did not even have open bookshelves. We regard this whole question of storage and retrieval as an important factor in the teaching of English, for the facilities with which we saw many teachers having to manage were dispiriting and restricting. Much the same can be said of furniture and fittings, which were often of a kind that frustrated attempts to work in new ways.

15.26 We do not underestimate the financial problems of equipping English departments in the ways we have suggested. A realistic view makes it obvious that sweeping changes and improvements cannot be effected overnight. Nevertheless, we do believe that where building improvements are being planned or new projects designed opportunities such as those we have described should not be missed. We are anxious not to prescribe accommodation requirements in such detail as to limit discussion, and for this reason we have resisted the temptation to reproduce plans in this chapter. We have confined ourselves to what we consider certain fundamental requirements, which we hope local authorities will accept as essential provision. We strongly recommend that when new buildings or extensions are being designed there should be full consultation between architects, the authority's English advisory staff, and teachers. Some of the best design currently to be found has resulted from this kind of professional cooperation.

15.27 We have been discussing ways in which English teachers can be helped by organisational and other means to develop their work, and we return now to the operation of the department itself. Before considering the articulation of the department's policy we must say something about the question of classroom control. In our visits we were acutely aware that some teachers were experiencing considerable problems, and there is evidence to suggest that such problems are far from uncommon. The general causes obviously lie beyond our brief, but we have formed the opinion that in the wrong circumstances some English teaching methods can actually contribute to these difficulties, since they put an additional strain on teachers who are weak in their control. If we are to be realistic we must draw attention to these disciplinary problems, for obviously the subtle aims we have outlined in the Report cannot be achieved unless there is peace in the classroom. We believe that English departments should consider the control implications of their approaches and should not commit themselves to ways of working which will be impracticable in the circumstances and likely to aggravate the difficulties.

15.28 In this chapter we have laid emphasis on the need for consultation between the teachers of English and for effective leadership by the head of department. How is the agreed policy to be articulated? Our visits left us with the impression that the 'syllabus' or 'scheme of work' has lost favour with many teachers of English. The passing of a certain kind of syllabus will certainly not be lamented. We refer to the document that spelt out in close detail every step each teacher was to take, to the extent that if he followed it he would have virtually no freedom of thought or action. It prescribed which points of grammar he was to teach, and in what order, and which books he might read with the children. Such schemes of work were often unworkable if the English teaching was to contain any life and variety. Not surprisingly they were allowed to gather dust, and in many schools were never replaced. Some able young teachers, reacting against syllabuses that were clearly inadequate, have opposed the notion of any kind of written document. We are bound to say from our experience that their sense of freedom has often proved illusory, as it has led to much fragmented teaching. This has been the case even in some departments with a tradition of discussion between its members. Indeed, informal exchange, though immensely valuable, can carry the risk of masking lack of coherence. In one school it was only in the course of our conversation that one teacher revealed to another that he had been using a certain kind of exercise for some time. In another school a teacher said of work with a third year class: 'I'm mostly living from hand to mouth, hoping that something one week will trigger off something for the next'. He admitted that his choice of work was neither planned nor a studied response to the interests of the class, but was determined largely by impulse. This kind of directionless drift is clearly related to questions of leadership, consultation, and joint planning within the department, but the absence of a working document is an aspect of these.

15.29 If the experience of English in the years of secondary education is to be coherent it must be more than a series of chance encounters. If there is no agreed statement of purpose, every teacher is on his own. Several of our witnesses pressed the importance of some form of documentation, but they differed in their interpretation of the idea. One believed that among other things it should record 'specific departmental policies such as hearing the children read aloud, the availability of homework for inspection, and the amount of writing that should be produced over a period of time'. For another it was 'essentially a "position paper", outlining the philosophy and aims, so that the collective wisdom of the team is recorded for mutual benefit and that of newcomers'. A third preferred to see it as 'basically related to classroom practice, and not to theory; to short-term aims, rather than long-term aim'. A number drew attention to its value for the school in which there were many new young teachers or a large and disparate group of teachers who 'took some English'.

15.30 We believe with our witnesses that every English department should produce a document making clear its purposes and the means it proposes to fulfil them. We have already argued that the head of department should create a climate in which there is continuing professional discussion among his colleagues. He should encourage them to share with him the responsibility for keeping up with new developments and knowledge, for a dialogue which fashions the English teaching in a school needs to be an informed dialogue. We believe that the thinking that emerges from it should take shape in a manifesto, reflecting the spirit and purpose of the department and responsive to the continuing exchange of views within it. We suggest that the term 'instrument of policy' would represent this more accurately than 'syllabus' or 'scheme of work'. We envisage it as a cumulative and slowly changing document, from which loose-leaf sections are withdrawn for revision as the department's ideas evolve. Its first purpose is to support the English teacher in the classroom, but those who devise it should also bear in mind its importance for the head and other colleagues in the school, for new teachers, students on teaching practice and their tutors, and for outside advisers. The document should contain a clear account of the aims and purposes of the department and of the balance of activities designed to fulfil them, and it might include an anthology of teaching ideas, an outline of any specific points which the department has agreed should be taught, the administrative procedure for stock, pupil records etc, and lists of books and other material available. Such a document would help teachers give shape, coherence and sequence to the work they devise for the pupils.

15.31 Much of what has been suggested in this chapter depends for its success on the head's vision and commitment. We are in no doubt of the great importance to the school as a whole of his attitude to English. If heads are in a position to help create a strong English department they are also uniquely placed to encourage the development of a language policy across the curriculum, the case for which is argued in Part Four. Such a policy means in effect that every teacher in the school should accept it as part of his responsibility to develop the pupils' reading, writing, and speaking ability in and through the subject or activity for which he is responsible. It also means that he should have an awareness of his own use of language and understand how the nature of the verbal exchange between himself and his pupils can affect the quality of the learning.

If the success of language and reading in the primary school depends upon the orientation of the whole school, the success of the secondary school can be said to depend very considerably on the level of achievement in reading and language. Unless the pupil can read, write and talk competently he cannot benefit from the range of learning which the secondary school provides. The responsibility for language growth in adolescents extends beyond the English department and becomes an important part of 'school management'. Our recommendations must therefore be addressed to heads as much as to English teachers, for we believe the time has come to raise language to a high priority in the complex life of the secondary school.

References

1. Richardson E The Teacher, The School, and the Task of Management Heinemann Educational Books: 1973.