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 25 The Survey: I Introduction
[pages 359 - 365]

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25.1 In the face of so much subjective comment on present-day practices in the teaching of English we decided to seek as wide a range of objective information as possible. The obvious way was to send a questionnaire to a substantial number of the maintained primary and secondary schools throughout England. Over 2,000 schools were invited to take part, and it is a measure of the interest aroused by the inquiry that so high a proportion (87.5 per cent) responded. The result is that this has been the most comprehensive survey ever undertaken in this country of the teaching of various aspects of English in primary and secondary schools. We are extremely grateful to the thousands of teachers who were involved in completing the questionnaires, and to the many who offered additional comment and opinion. Section IV of this chapter reproduces the questionnaires and the total or percentage responses, and certain of these have also been used throughout the Report where appropriate.

25.2 The survey sought information about the organisation of the schools and their staffing and resources as these affected the teaching of English. It also enquired into the extent and nature of the teaching itself, with the intention of constructing a picture of the range of activities that a child might experience during a typical week at school. It would clearly not have been feasible to examine the situation at every stage from nursery to O Level, so we selected four age groups to study. These were the children aged 6, 9, 12 and 14 on 31 August 1972. Between them they could be relied upon to give a fair representation of primary and secondary school practice. At one extreme they included children in the earliest stages of learning to read, at the other those who had started a course leading to an external examination. Our enquiries were directed at the range of English activities of children in each of the four age groups.

Details of the sampling

25.3 Our sampling design allowed us, in one operation, to gather information about the schools themselves and about pupils of the relevant age groups. A list was prepared of all maintained primary and secondary schools in England. This grouped them according to type and size of school as recorded in January 1972. Systematic sampling with a random start was then used to select one in 10 secondary and one in 20 primary schools. Children of the specified ages were randomly selected from within these schools, according to the criteria given in paragraph 25.6 below, so that in each chosen school one child came from every class containing at least five children of the specified age. The activities of each child were thus a 'sample' of the activities of the class. Details of the stratification by school type and size are given below. The schools were grouped by type to enable us to pick sample children of the specified ages. Grouping of the schools by size made it possible to check whether certain aspects of organisation and provision were affected by school size.

Type of school

PRIMARY:

i. Infant schools; First schools for age ranges 5-7, 5-8 and 5-9;

ii. Junior with Infant schools; First and Middle schools; First schools for the age range 5-10;

iii. Junior schools; First schools for the age range 7-10; Middle schools deemed primary for the age range 8-12.

iv. Junior tier comprehensives with an age range 11-13, 11-14, and 11-16 with optional transfer at 13 or 14;

v. Senior tier comprehensives with an age range 13-18 and 14-18; comprehensive upper schools starting at age 13;

vi. Modern; grammar; comprehensive upper schools starting at age 12; 'all-through' comprehensives for the age ranges 11-16 and 11-18; 'other' secondary schools (mostly those formerly known as bilateral and multilateral).

Size of school (number of full time pupils)

PRIMARY

up to 150
151 to 250
251 and over.

SECONDARY

Up to 500
501 to 1,000
1,001 and over.

25.4 The category ii primary schools contain both 6 and 9 year old pupils and, since it would have been unreasonable to present these schools with sets of questions for both age groups, twice as many of those in this category were included in the survey. One half of them were asked to report on the activities of 6 year olds while the other half reported upon 9 year olds. This arrangement has been taken into account in compiling the tables which give data on the Primary schools sample.

25.5 Below are set out the size and response characteristics of the sample of schools compared with the total population of schools from which it was drawn:

Table 22 Size and response characteristics of the survey sample of schools compared with the total population of schools from which it was drawn

Usable responses were obtained from 88 per cent of the primary schools, and 85 per cent of the secondary schools. The questionnaires were distributed by courtesy of LEAs, and we selected the week beginning 22 January 1973 as the one for which schools should be asked to complete them. This particular week was chosen as being free of features which would make it untypical of a full normal working weeks It was in the second term of a school year and sufficiently far from a holiday closure to make uninterrupted working likely. Lastly, it was the week in which the schools would be collecting annual DES statistical data which were relevant to our own inquiry and afforded a useful overlap.

The sampling of children within schools

25.6 The first part of the questionnaire was directed at obtaining information about the organisation and resources of the SCHOOL as such. The second consisted of a section for each CLASS in which there were at least five pupils of the specified age, defined as at 31 August 1972. The class section of the Primary Questionnaire was completed by the teacher in charge of the Registration class, and that of the Secondary Questionnaire by the teacher responsible for the teaching of English to the class or group. Where more than one teacher was involved in teaching the class English we asked that the task be undertaken by the one with the greatest share of the teaching. Where this was divided equally the task fell to the teacher whose name was first alphabetically. We chose as our sample pupil the boy OR girl whose name was first ALPHABETICALLY (not necessarily the first on the register) and who was present for the whole of the week beginning 22 January 1973. The teacher was asked to fill in the form in relation to the activities of this pupil during that particular week.

25.7 It was understandable that a few teachers should have had some misgivings about our sampling of activities by reference to individual children. The activities of the child who was to be the subject of this section of the questionnaire may have been far from typical of the activities of his class as a whole. However, by adopting this selection procedure we would ensure that the full range of children's activities was obtained, and it was our purpose to describe the whole age group rather than any one individual class.

Details of the questionnaires on individual pupils

Primary

25.8 In Part One of the Report we discussed opinion on the relationship between standards of achievement and certain kinds of school organisation and teaching method. We pointed out there how subjective such opinion was bound to be, and in framing the questionnaire we considered the feasibility of testing various hypotheses frequently advanced. It is notoriously difficult to produce objective criteria by which to define differing teaching 'regimes', but we considered that the attempt should be made. One of the most common opinions expressed in the correspondence we received was that 'vertical grouping' resulted in the neglect of certain practices. It so happens that this is one of the easiest forms of classroom organisation to define in a fashion suitable for use in a questionnaire. We therefore chose to identify it in the sample and to examine the extent to which the children in such classes experienced teaching different from those in 'conventional' classes. Our identification of vertically grouped classes rested upon answers to question 1H in the class sections of the Primary Questionnaire.

A 'deliberately vertically grouped class' was defined as a class for which the answer to question 1H was 'yes' AND, for 6 year old classes, the class was in either:

(i) an Infant or First school with more than 70 pupils; or

(ii) a Junior with Infant or First and Middle school with more than 200 pupils;

(i) a Junior with Infant or First and Middle school with more than 200 pupils; or

(ii) a Junior or Middle school with more than 150 pupils.

A class 'not vertically grouped' was defined as any class where the answer to question 1H was 'no' AND the class was in a school as large as those shown for 'deliberately vertically grouped' classes above.

The distinction between 'deliberate' and 'not deliberate' groupings was thus made on the assumption that in small schools vertical grouping is not altogether a matter of choice. In part II of this chapter the results are given of certain comparisons between the different classes.

25.9 One obvious problem in obtaining information about specific activities is that in primary schools English is not a clearly defined subject on a timetable. The extension of language experience, the development of writing, the time spent in reading: all are fundamental parts of the total primary school experience, whether the children are making a model, learning about weight and volume, or investigating some aspect of local history. When we asked teachers to try to estimate the amount of time spent on particular activities in English we were aware that our questions had an air of artificiality about them. In the questionnaire we provided a series of thirty-minute time slots, and the fact that many of the replies ranged so widely over these probably results from the teachers' differing interpretation of our questions. Some teachers will have held strictly to the categories we listed, and may well organise their work very much along such lines. Others will have had difficulty in deciding how much time any one activity occupied in a week's work in which no divisions were made. Where activities are very specific the answers are likely to be more reliable. For example, work on spelling or comprehension exercises can be clearly defined and quantified. Oral language work, on the other hand, permeates the curriculum and the answers will almost inevitably underestimate the time spent upon it. For these reasons, essentially educational rather than statistical, we have not attempted to give total times spent on English in primary schools in the same way as has been possible for secondary schools.

Secondary

25.10 A point we felt it necessary to determine at the outset in respect of the secondary school was the extent to which English is still taught as a separate subject. In recent years there has been much discussion of integrated studies of one kind or another, and it has generally been taken for granted that where they are adopted English should be part of the package. We therefore asked whether the 12 and 14 year old pupils in the sample were in classes where English was experienced in this way. We distinguished two possible forms this might take: (i) where English was taught as a separately recognisable element in an integrated scheme, (ii) where it was completely assimilated into an integrated scheme of which it was an indistinguishable element. It will be seen from paragraph 15.2 that only a very small number of schools had adopted either. The form of integration defined in (ii) above accounted for only 2 per cent of classes with 12 year olds and 3 per cent of classes with 14 year olds. Since this kind of organisation is not consistent with identifiable English activities, these sample pupils were left out of the activities data. Consequently, the totals for some tables will be found to be short of the total of schools and pupils in the achieved sample. This is noted in the footnotes to the appropriate tables.

25.11 The 14 year olds were divided into three distinct categories: 'examination pupils', 'non-examination pupils', and 'remedial pupils'. There are, of course, some schools which adopt a policy of entering all pupils for an external examination, whatever their level of ability. In our data, therefore, there may be instances where a pupil whom a different school would have placed in a 'remedial' group has been entered by the respondent school as belonging to an examination group.

25.12 In the questionnaire the English teaching activities at both age levels were presented under four main heads: Writing, Language Study, Reading and Oral English. These were subdivided into 45 specific activities in school, and 28 homework activities (i.e. excluding Oral English). Our aim was to obtain a very detailed picture of English teaching, but this inevitably led to substantial difficulties of interpretation. For each of the activities we presented the question in a form which divided the time spent during the week into half-hour intervals. This exhaustive use of sub-divisions meant that many more activities were listed than any one teacher could cover in the course of a week's teaching. It was therefore necessary to provide a zero time slot to allow respondents to record a 'nil return' for some activities. In the analysis of the data this presented some problems, which are explained in the technical notes at the end of the chapter. Nevertheless, we have been able to calculate average teaching times for each specific activity as well as for the four main groupings. These average teaching times are presented in terms of time spent (a) by all the sample classes, and (b) by only those classes which included the activity in their English lessons during the week in question. We would emphasise that all these calculated times should be interpreted with caution in respect of individual sub-activities. The safest interpretation will always be in terms of the total time devoted to the teaching of English or to the main division totals for Writing, Language Study, Reading and Oral English. Because of the lack of rigorous definition of the individual sub-activities, comparisons between them are obviously less reliable than comparisons between any of the four main activities which make up the total time devoted to the teaching of English.

25.13 In fact we were able to make an independent check upon the total English teaching time which we had calculated from the records of individual activities in the half-hour times intervals. In a separate question, teachers were asked to state the total time allowed for English during one week. To discover the average times spent on individual activities we had used the mid-point of each time interval. If these procedures were adequate, the resulting totals should agree with those gained from asking directly for the total time given to English. The table below shows the agreement to have been remarkably close for 'all pupils' in the two age groups.

Table 23 Total time devoted to teaching English in secondary schools

25.14 It remains only to say that we do not claim to have made an exhaustive study of all the data in the Primary and Secondary Commentaries which follow. Given the time at our disposal we have confined ourselves to a limited range and depth of comment. However, both sections include a variety of cross-tabulations for more extensive study by interested readers, and we have made reference to these and to other data in various chapters of the Report.