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: III Secondary commentary
[pages 402 - 443]

[Note: In this online version, the tables are shown as links in the text - clicking on one opens a pop-up window displaying the relevant table. A few of the tables are taller than the window allows. If your browser does not automatically display a scroll bar, grab any part of the table with your mouse and drag downwards to see the bottom of the table.]

THE SCHOOLS

Table 63 The sample secondary schools

25.24 The 'General' sections of the questionnaires provided information about the schools themselves, their size, staffing and pupil numbers, organisation, equipment, and the special help they gave to poor readers. The 392 sample schools had 260,579 full-time pupils on roll, with 14,643 full-time and 1,644 part-time qualified teachers. If one takes part-timers in terms of equivalents of a full-time teacher, the whole staff complement amounted to the equivalent of 15,452 full-time teachers, giving an average of 16.9 pupils per teacher. The pupil-teacher ratio for maintained secondary schools (excluding middle schools) in England in January 1973 was identical at 16.9:1. (Both figures follow the normal convention of including the head as a member of the teaching force of the school.)

The 'Individual Pupil' sections of the questionnaires collected information on the school work and experience of 939 12 year olds and 1,052 14 year olds, all in different classes. Data on the individual pupils appear throughout this section, and their work in English is examined in paragraph 25.31.

THE ORGANISATION OF ENGLISH TEACHING

25.25 (i) School organisation of English teaching

Table 64 Secondary school organisation of English teaching

It was most common to find English teaching organised by a separate English department, though in over a third of all schools the responsibility for the English of some pupils lay with the remedial department. Other patterns were uncommon.

(ii) English within Integrated Studies

There has been much discussion in recent years of the practice of schools which have abandoned the teaching of English as a separate subject in favour of an integrated approach, where it becomes part of a humanities or a social studies course. We therefore set out to find how widespread was this practice in the schools in our sample. It emerged that 93 per cent of classes containing 12 year olds and 94 per cent of those containing 14 year olds were taught English as a separately timetabled subject. For only 2 per cent of the classes of 12 year olds and 3 per cent of those of 14 year olds was English assimilated . into an integrated scheme of which it was an indistinguishable element. In the remainder English was part of an integrated scheme but still a recognisable element within it.

(iii) School organisation of Drama

In paragraph 15.9 we mentioned various ways in which drama could be organised. The questionnaire showed that in 84 per cent of schools drama was part of the work of the English department; 10 per cent of schools had separate drama departments; 4 per cent taught it in combination with one or more other subjects excluding English, and the remaining 2 per cent taught no drama at all.

(iv) Type of classes

Question 4 of the Individual Pupil Section of the questionnaire was designed to make it possible to tabulate much of the data by type of class. For each age group the separate types of group are exclusive. A pupil in a group with examination objectives is recorded only as in an examination group, even though it is conceivable that he may also be receiving remedial help.

The types of group are as follows:

12 YEAR OLDS

Remedial: Pupils assessed by their teachers as being in need of special help, and receiving it. (11.4 per cent)

Other: Pupils not so assessed. (88.6 per cent)

Examination: Pupils in a group some or all of whose members have external examination objectives. (84.7 per cent)

Non-examination: Pupils of varying levels of ability following courses with no examination objectives. (10.2 per cent)

Remedial: Pupils assessed by their teachers as being in need of special help and receiving it. (5.1 per cent)

(v) Size of English teaching groups

There were 55,978 12 year olds and 55,498 14 year olds in the sample schools. The 12 year olds were organised into 2,010 English teaching groups with an average group size of 28 pupils. The 14 year olds received a more generous staffing allocation, being organised into 2,125 groups with an average size of 26. The full details are given in Table 65 where the differential staffing of classes by age and type is shown.

Table 65 Comparison of class sizes of remedial and other classes - 12 and 14 year olds

(vi) Formation of groups for English teaching

Heads were asked to say how the 12 and 14 year olds were grouped for the teaching of English. Where more than one method was in operation they were asked to indicate the one which involved the largest number of pupils in the age group. The results of that question appear in Diagram 15 below, where the different forms of grouping have been arranged in descending order of frequency for 12 year olds. This presentation has been adopted in order to show how the relative frequency of different methods of grouping changes from 12 to 14. For the older children the existence of English groups formed according to course or option choice provides an extra dimension. These would include groups formed for English according to their examination options.

Mixed ability teaching in the sample was evidently very common for 12 year old classes, but less so for 14 year olds, the respective figures being 54.2 per cent and 34.8 per cent. Both totals contain a certain element of selection in that some schools exempt from mixed ability teaching those pupils receiving remedial teaching. The remainder of the schools operated streaming or setting for English in one form or another. Clearly, therefore, some form of selection was still in practice in many secondary schools.

(vii) Time spent on English

(a) In school

Information from the Individual Pupil sections of the questionnaire enabled us to construct Table 66, which indicates the amount of time spent on English in school during one week.

Table 66 Time spent on English by 12 and 14 year olds

We enquired in some detail into the amount of time spent on English by the sample children, and into the activities which occupied that time. The latter are analysed in paragraph 25.31: The Pupils and Their Work. The evidence of Table 66 is that the majority of the pupils spent between 2½ and 4 hours on English in school. The average weekly time lay between 3 hrs 12 mins and 3 hrs 22 mins for all except the 12 year old 'Remedial' pupils, who had almost an hour more. Indeed 18 per cent of these pupils were allocated more than 5 hours of English during the week.

Table 67 Number of periods of English per week for 12 and 14 year olds

It would be reasonable to expect from the indications in Table 66 that pupils in remedial groups would have, on average, a greater number of English periods in a week than all other pupils in the two age groups. Table 67 confirms this, but it also shows that the variation within each of the groups is far more marked than any variation between them. If we leave aside these pupils, the table shows that the common experience of over three quarters of all groups was between 4 and 6 periods of English a week, or on average about one period a day. Of the 12 year old pupils in remedial groups 49 per cent also had 4-6 English periods a week, but 46 per cent of them had more than this, and one in every three had as many as 9 or more periods of English a week. At age 14 there was less difference between the numbers of English periods allocated to 'remedial' and other pupils. The majority of remedial classes were likely to have 6 or more English periods a week, whereas examination classes commonly had no more than 5.

Table 68 English lessons over one hour in duration for 12 and 14 year olds

As the single school period is normally between 30 and 40 minutes long, it is clear that most lessons of over 1 hour would be timetabled as double periods. In paragraph 15.16 we urged that English should have a due allocation of double periods. Table 68 above shows that on average a third or more of the sample pupils never experienced an English lesson over an hour long. At the other extreme over 20 per cent of the remedial and non-examination groups had 3 or more English lessons of over an hour, which suggests that they may have been allocated almost all their English in double periods. The figures were lower for the examination 14 year olds and the non-remedial 12 year olds, but 18 per cent of the former and 15 per cent of the latter had 3 or more English lessons of over an hour in duration in a week.

Table 69 Time allocated to homework in a week for 12 and 14 year olds

A note of caution is necessary here. Whereas the data for the time spent on English in school are derived from the teacher's observation of the sample pupil at work, the homework times are based on less firm foundations, for they can represent no more than the teacher's estimate or the pupil's own report. Given this reservation, an examination of the time spent by different categories of pupils revealed that remedial and non-examination groups were more likely to do little or no homework than examination groups; half the pupils in the 12 year old remedial sample and over 60 per cent of the 14 year old remedial and non-examination groups did up to 30 minutes or less in the week in question. Indeed, for the older pupils homework was the exception rather than the rule unless they had examination objectives, in which case English homework was much more likely.

The examination class 14 year olds had 68 minutes a week, which can be compared with the average of 45 minutes for the total of pupils in the sample who did any homework at all.

THE TEACHERS OF ENGLISH

25.26 (i) Number of teachers involved in teaching English

In paragraph 15.14 we suggested that to a greater extent than any other subject English 'borrows' teachers from other areas of the curriculum. The questionnaire provided the opportunity to discover how many teachers in the sample schools were involved in the teaching of English to any age group (i.e. not simply the 12 and 14 year olds), and how they were deployed. Table 70 shows that 3,397, or 1 in 5, of all the teachers in the secondary schools were involved in the teaching of English. The table should be studied in association with Table 72, which indicates the extent to which these teachers were qualified for this teaching.

Of the 3,397, 9.4 per cent worked only part-time, a proportion slightly lower than that for all part-timers in the sample, which was 10.1 per cent. DES statistics show that the comparable figure for part-time teachers of all subjects in secondary schools in England in January 1973 was 11.3 per cent. Paragraphs 15.13-15.14 contain our views on the problems for English of employing so many teachers who, whether part-time or not, spend only part of the week working on English.

Table 70 Amount of time spent by teachers in English teaching, by size and type of school

Table 71 Number of teachers by whom 12 and 14 year olds are taught English in a week

The table shows that 30 per cent of 12 year olds and 14 per cent of 14 year olds were taught English by more than one teacher in the course of a week, but rarely more than two. Had it been common practice within the sample for the non-specialist English teacher to 'fill in' by taking one or two English lessons wherever needed, the proportion of pupils meeting two or more English teachers in the course of a week would undoubtedly have been higher. Since the great majority of the sample pupils met only one teacher for English in the week, we must conclude that these non-specialist teachers were taking them for all their English lessons.

We checked to see whether the pattern for remedial classes differed noticeably from that of the age group as a whole. In both age groups rather more of these classes saw two or more teachers in the course of a week than did the other groups, but overall only 10 per cent of the remedial classes met three or more.

(ii) Qualifications of teachers teaching English

Table 72 Qualifications of teachers teaching English, as supplied by the heads of the schools

The heads were asked to state how many of all their teachers teaching English had any of the qualifications listed in Table 72 above, no teacher to be included in the return more than once. The table shows that almost one third of the teachers taking English lessons had none of the qualifications listed. The implications of this finding are discussed in Chapter 15.14.

Note: It will be seen that the figures do not correspond closely with the figures for teacher qualifications in Tables 77 and 78. These were derived from a separate return made by the teacher taking English with the sample child, and relate only to the 12 and 14 year old age groups.

(iii) In-service education relating to the teaching of English (a) The survey data made it possible to analyse the attendances at in-service training courses of the 3,397 teachers teaching English. Of this total less than one third (1,104) had been involved in courses in connection with English teaching in the three years preceding the survey. Since the total number of attendances amounted to 2,038, it appears that most of the teachers concerned had attended more than one course. The great majority of these courses were very short; nearly half were of only 2-5 sessions and only about 8 per cent were six weeks or more in length. Table 73 shows that the highest proportion were on general English, remedial teaching, reading, literature and practical drama. Spoken English and new areas such as linguistics, English as a second language, and English within interdisciplinary studies had fewer teachers attending. (The questionnaire does not enable us to say whether this was attributable to lack of supply or lack of demand). Full-time courses lasting one year or one term accounted for only 6 per cent of all the course attendances, and the majority of them were on general English or remedial teaching.

Table 73 Topics and duration of courses attended by teachers of English during the 3 years to January 1973

(b) Teachers' Centres

Another aspect of in-service education is the use of Teachers' Centres, which are not only the venue for a large number of short courses but also the focal point for a variety of activities of other kinds. 280 (71 per cent) of the schools had had at least one teacher attending a Teachers' Centre in connection with the teaching of English in the 12 months to January 1973. This may have been for any one of a number of purposes - from involvement in development work and group study to visiting a book exhibition. It is important to point out that almost a third of the schools made no use of a Teachers' Centre for English work during the 12 months in question.

(iv) Membership of various organisations

The questionnaire enquired about the schools' membership of a selection of professional organisations whose activities are connected with some aspect of English in schools, and the results were as follows:

Table 74 Associations concerned with reading and the teaching of English etc

The responses for membership of the School Library Association and the National Association for the Teaching of English were encouragingly high. However, information from the two associations themselves suggests that these figures do not reflect active membership of local SLA and NATE groups. It is probable that for many schools membership means little more than access to the associations' periodical publications.

THE PUPILS

25.27 There were 260,579 pupils in the secondary schools in our survey. Paragraph 25.6 explains how we selected a 'sample pupil' from each class of the relevant age group. The sampling procedure resulted in the selection of 939 12 year olds and 1,052 14 year olds who became the subjects of the individual pupil questionnaires.

(i) Reading standards

The teachers were asked to rate each sample pupil in terms of his reading ability and to assume that on average 25 per cent of children were good readers for their age, 50 per cent average, and 25 per cent poor readers. The table of results conforms reasonably closely with this ratio:

Table 75 Reading ability of 12 and 14 year olds as assessed by teachers

This information was then used in cross-analysis, to check whether and in which ways the educational provision differed for pupils in each of the three levels of reading ability.

(ii) The pupils' reading standards compared with time spent on English

Table 76 below shows the results of such an exercise in terms of the time spent on English in a week by children with different reading abilities.

Table 76 Time spent on English by 12 and 14 year olds, according to reading ability

The table shows that pupils in the 'below average' category had more time designated for English in their curriculum than those in the 'above average' category. One sixth of the 12 year olds were allocated more than 4 hours of English in a week, and within this group were 33 per cent of the 'below average', 13 per cent of the 'average' and 10 per cent of the 'above average' readers. The difference is more sharply marked for the 12 year olds than for the 14 year olds. From this it might be inferred that, certainly for the pupils in the earlier years of the secondary school, there is a concern to devote extra time and therefore staffing in an attempt to improve the standards of the 'below average' readers. Whether this time is being spent in activities likely to effect this improvement is a matter taken up later in paragraph 25.31.

(iii) The pupils' reading ability and the qualifications of their teachers

The information in Table 75 was cross-tabulated against the qualifications of the teachers, and the results are given below. As a separate exercise a cross-tabulation was constructed to show the pupil's type of course (whether remedial, examination or non-examination or other) against his teacher's qualifications. These results appear in Table 78.

Table 77 Qualifications of teachers teaching English to 12 and 14 year olds, according to pupils' reading ability

Table 78 Qualifications of teachers teaching English to 12 and 14 year olds, by type of class

Table 78 shows that the English graduate is more likely to teach English to the above average and average readers of both age groups. The converse is also true, that teachers with no specific qualifications in English are allocated disproportionately to the 'remedial' classes and the 'below average' readers. Table 77 shows that 37 per cent of teachers teaching below average readers of 12 years old had 'none of the above qualifications'. For 14 year olds the comparable figure was 31 per cent. When teachers' qualifications are compared with type of class, in Table 78, it can be seen that 44 per cent of teachers teaching remedial pupils of both 12 and 14 years old had 'none of the above qualifications'. We cannot say how many of those teachers without any of the listed English qualifications may in fact have had remedial teaching qualifications, but from the number of teachers known to have had additional training it is safe to assume that very few of the sample teachers were so qualified.

Taken together, Tables 77 and 78 indicate that children experiencing reading and language difficulties are much more likely than other pupils to be taught by a teacher without qualifications in English. Discounting for this purpose the teachers in category c who may possess a BEd with English it can be said that the probability of a pupil in a remedial group being taught English by an English graduate is about one in eight at age 12 and negligible at age 14.

ACCOMMODATION AND RESOURCES

25.28 (i) Accommodation and facilities for the teaching of English

One important influence on the achievement of an English department is its accommodation, a subject discussed at some length in paragraphs 15.21-15.26. In the questionnaire we asked how many of those teachers who taught any English took most of their English lessons in the same room. We found that 63 per cent of the teachers enjoyed this facility and were therefore in a position to create their own English teaching environment. 27 per cent moved to rooms which were class bases* to take their English lessons, while for the remaining 10 per cent the location appears to have been determined arbitrarily, with both pupils and teachers lacking a regular base for their English. In Table 79 these categories are compared by size and type of school. The table shows that grammar school teachers were far more likely to teach in class bases than teachers in the other kinds of school, and the larger the school the greater the tendency for this to be true. By comparison the modern, comprehensive and 'other' secondary school teachers of English were more likely to teach English mainly in the same room. In the modern school this tendency increased with size of school, so that almost 8 out of 10 teachers in modern schools of up to 1,000 pupils taught in the same room, and more than 9 out of 10 in the schools of over 1,000.

*A class base is a room used regularly by a class, especially for registration purposes. Teachers taking English in class bases therefore have to move from room to room to teach their classes.

The general impression given by Table 79 is that on average more teachers of English have their own recognised teaching rooms than might have been expected. However, whether those rooms can seriously be called 'English rooms' remains in question. They may well be general classrooms, used for a variety of purposes and not furnished or equipped in a way that would benefit English teaching. Moreover, we must again point out that over a third (37 per cent) of teachers teaching English had no regular base for their work.

Fewer than 4 out of 5 schools (78.7 per cent) had a storeroom for the use of the English department and only 39 of the sample schools had a departmental office. Thus, although 20 per cent of all secondary teachers are involved in teaching some English each week, fewer than 10 per cent of schools have a focal point of this kind for the coordination of these efforts. What is more, only 31 (7.9 per cent) of the schools had any clerical time available for the exclusive use of the English department. At a time when English teaching is making increasing use of reproduced material - worksheets, facsimile documents, and individual copies of poems and prose extracts - there is little evidence of the supply of ancillary help which would take the additional burden off the teacher.

(ii) Books and library provision

305 (78 per cent) of the schools in our sample had central libraries, while 83 (21 per cent) had libraries in more than one unit, such as a lower and an upper school library. Four schools reported that they had no library of either type.

Table 80 shows the number of periods in a week for which school libraries were timetabled for purposes other than library use. This table demonstrates that most libraries were free for at least two thirds of the week. It is nevertheless highly discouraging that for one reason or another over 26 per cent of schools found it necessary to use their libraries as a classroom for a substantial part of the week. A library which is used as a class base for half the week or more simply cannot function as an effective resource centre for the school, a disadvantage which is discussed at greater length in Chapter 21.

Table 80 Number of periods in a week when the library was timetabled for other than library use

We then sought to discover how well stocked these libraries were. The results were as follows:

Table 81 Provision of library books

Note: We explain in Chapter 21 that we do not regard 'average number of books per pupil' as a satisfactory measure of book provision. It is given here merely as a rough indication of the book resources available.

Table 81 shows that just 30 per cent of the schools in the sample had 11 books or more per pupil, which means that 70 per cent had fewer than the minima recommended by the Library Association, namely 10 books per pupil and 15 for every sixth form pupil. We regard the 44 per cent of schools with fewer than 8 books per pupil as particularly badly stocked.

64 per cent of schools recorded that they borrowed books from the LEA, County, or Borough library, but we are unable to say whether the 36 per cent of schools which did not use these sources chose not to do so or had no external library to call upon.

It is argued in earlier chapters that teachers need to be better informed about children's books. The questionnaire selected two ways in which teachers could improve their knowledge (i.e. through in-service courses and through membership of organisations professionally concerned with books in schools) and aimed to discover how many took advantage of them.

(a) In all the in-service training courses attended by teachers in the three years to January 1973, only 142 attendances had been concerned with the school library and only 202 with literature. Details of the length and variety of these courses can be found in Table 73.

(b) We found that 224 (57 per cent) of the schools belonged to the School Library Association. This is one of a number of valuable sources of information about books, and well-informed reviews of new material could profitably be used more widely in schools. The local teachers' discussion groups and working parties run by the Association and at Teachers' Centres can also help teachers to keep up to date with children's literature, but relatively few groups exist at present.

(iii) Audio-visual resources

Table 82 Audio-visual equipment available for the teaching of English

The questionnaire asked about the availability of certain items of equipment for the teaching of English, and Table 82 shows the numbers of schools with the items we selected. The list was not intended to be exhaustive but featured the more common items that one might expect to find employed in English teaching. The results show that large numbers of English teachers in the sample have access to most of them. The video recorder was available in almost one in five of the schools, and independent evidence suggests that the rate at which schools are acquiring these is growing rapidly. It is noteworthy that fewer than 3 out of 5 schools had a battery tape recorder available for the teaching of English. The value of this versatile machine is discussed in Chapter 10 and again in Chapter 22, where we suggest that it should be much more widely used than this figure suggests is at present the case. It was interesting to note from the replies to Question 1.C.2 that almost a quarter of the schools had a projection room and 14 per cent a recording room.

THE TESTING OF READING ATTAINMENT

25.29 The questionnaire findings on primary school testing practice were discussed earlier in this Chapter. The secondary survey shows that the incidence of testing decreases progressively as the child gets older. The schools reported the following pattern of testing of reading attainment:

Table 83 Testing of reading attainment by standardised reading tests

(a) Only 2 out of 5 secondary schools tested the reading attainment of all their pupils on entry. The remaining 61 per cent comprised 35 per cent who tested selectively and 26 per cent who did not test at all. It should be remembered that the sample contained 73 grammar schools.

(b) After the child's first years in secondary school the percentage of schools testing all their pupils dropped very significantly, though the majority tested at least some of their pupils up to the age of 13.

Table 84 below gives the incidence of each test used.

Table 84 Use of different reading tests

Of the 14 specific tests we listed, the three Schonell tests were most commonly used. Indeed we found 395 instances of Schonell tests in use in the 392 schools, compared with 336 of all the other 11 tests combined. In addition 124 schools reported using 'Other tests', which are likely to have included some lesser-known tests, and possibly a few designed by the schools themselves. The maximum number of schools which carried out any testing of the reading of any age group was 272, and on average schools which did test used three different ones.

The fact that several tests are in use suggests a number of possible explanations. Schools may be choosing the tests most appropriate to the pupils' reading ability. The poor readers among the younger children are likely to be given tests with a wide age span or tests particularly suitable for juniors. On the other hand, teachers within the same school may be using different tests because they are able to choose according to their personal preferences. Where this is the practice it should be remembered that it is important to have continuity and comparability in testing results, an aim which will not be achieved by switching from one to another from year to year.

PUPILS WITH READING AND LANGUAGE DIFFICULTIES

25.30 A brief account of the way the questionnaire identified pupils in need of special help appeared in paragraph 25.25. It is necessary to add only two points here:

(a) Some schools give all their pupils the opportunity to take at least one or two subjects in external examinations, whatever their ability. Where this happens it will have had the effect of including within the 'examination' category a number of pupils whose schools normally classed them as 'remedial'.

(b) Conversely some pupils of average or above average ability choose not to take external examinations; our 'non-examination' group may therefore encompass a wide span of ability.

50.7 per cent of the schools had a head of English department or a head of Remedial department part of whose responsibility was to advise specialist teachers in other subjects on the needs of the pupils with low reading ability. This is clearly open to wide interpretation, and the evidence of our visits is that it often meant no more than that the head of department supplied other teachers with the pupil's reading age or a brief note of his progress. 27 per cent of the heads of either English or Remedial department did not undertake this advisory role in any way. The lack of interdepartmental cooperation indicated by these figures must lead us to assume that the very specific reading and language needs of the pupils in remedial classes may well be being overlooked in their other lessons.

Eighty seven (22 per cent) of the schools found this question not applicable to their circumstances, which suggests that they did not consider they had any substantial problem of this kind. Indeed 92 (24.1 per cent) of the schools with 12 year old classes and 115 (30.4 per cent) of the schools with 14 year old classes did not feel the need for any special provision for their children. In this connection it should be remembered that 73 (19 per cent) of the sample schools were grammar schools.

(ii) Incidence of pupils in remedial classes

12 YEAR OLDS: of the 939 sample pupils, 107 (11.4 per cent) were in remedial classes.

14 YEAR OLDS: of the 1,052 sample pupils, 53 (5 per cent) were in remedial classes. In addition 107 (10.2 per cent) were in courses which did not lead to any external examination. Thus 15 per cent of the 14 year olds in the sample had no examination objectives.

(iii) Size of classes

Table 85 Size of classes of 12 and 14 year olds

In practice the size of all classes is determined by the head, according to what he conceives to be reasonable demands upon his staffing complement and the requirements of different groups of pupils. It is generally recognised that classes of children in need of special help should be smaller than other classes if success is to be achieved in helping individuals to make progress. Among the 12 year olds less than 30 per cent of remedial classes were of 15 or fewer pupils, while a further 33 per cent contained 16-20. The rest were larger and one in 10 contained over 25 pupils. The figures for the 14 year olds showed more favourable ratios; almost half the classes (45 per cent) had 15 or fewer pupils, while scarcely any classes exceeded 20 pupils.

It was pointed out above that pupils without examination objectives are not necessarily always pupils with reading and learning difficulties. Nevertheless there is likely to be a wide range of needs in these classes and it was therefore encouraging to discover that the large majority of their classes (73 per cent) did not exceed 25. However, the smaller numbers in the remedial and non-examination groups appear to be being achieved at the expense of the examination groups. Of these, 3 in 5 contain more than 25 pupils. Full details may be seen in Table 65.

(iv) Time spent on English in a week by remedial and other classes

Table 86 Comparison of time spent on English in a week by remedial and other classes - 12 and 14 year olds

In Table 86 the 'Other' group refers to all those who are not in remedial classes. It is noticeable that in sharp contrast to the remedial group the total time spent on English by this group follows similar distribution patterns at both age levels. For the 12 year olds in remedial groups there is a strong concentration on English, to the extent that for almost half of them the time allocated to it exceeds four hours a week. At age 14 there is less contrast between the total time allocated to these groups and that assigned to others. At one extreme a slightly higher proportion of remedial classes exceeded four hours English a week, while at the other 13 per cent of them received less than 2½ hours, the corresponding percentage for the other classes being 7.5. In some schools it is the practice to develop courses of a kind intended to prepare the less able pupil for the time when he leaves school. Such courses sometimes place a considerable emphasis on increased practical work and out of school visiting, so that the amount of time allocated to English lessons is accordingly reduced.

From the evidence of Tables 78, 85 and 86, it can be concluded that the children in need of special help in English tend to lose on the swings what they gain on the roundabouts. Many of them are in smaller than average classes and many may also have the potential advantages of a considerably larger allocation of time for English. On the other hand, their teaching is too often entrusted to teachers who are qualified neither in English nor in remedial teaching. Moreover, as is shown in paragraph 25.31, much of the English work they are asked to perform can be considered unsuitable and may tend to reinforce failure rather than inspire success.

The teachers were asked to state the percentage of the total number of pupils in the two age groups for whom they were able to make provision for special help. This was then compared with their estimate of the percentage of pupils for whom such provision was desirable. The results were as follows:

Table 87 Special provision for 12 and 14 year olds with reading and language difficulties

This table gives only the average of the responses, but it indicates that in the case of the 12 year olds the schools were managing to provide for 81 per cent of what they estimated to be the total need for special help, and in the case of the 14 year olds for almost 72 per cent.

Table 88, which follows, gives fuller detail of the returns, and shows that in one third of the schools special provision fell short of what the heads considered desirable.

Table 88 Special provision considered necessary and special provision actually made for 12 and 14 year olds with reading and language difficulties

(v) Organisation of special provision for pupils with reading or language difficulties

Heads were asked which of the forms of organisation listed in Table 89 were used in their schools to make special provision for pupils with reading or language difficulties. If we subtract from the total of 392 schools the 73 grammar schools and those without pupils of the specified ages there remain 308 schools with 12 year olds and 305 with 14 year olds. It emerged that some schools used more than one form of organisation, particularly for their younger pupils. The percentage (excluding grammar schools) using each was as follows:

Table 89 Methods of making special provision for 12 and 14 year olds with reading and language difficulties

(vi) Initial training and in-service education of teachers of pupils in remedial groups and classes

Table 78 compared the qualifications of teachers with the type of class they taught. Comments on the qualifications of staff teaching pupils in remedial classes or groups are to be found earlier in the chapter.

The questionnaires asked how many of the teachers working with these pupils had received specific training (initial or in-service) leading to a qualification in the work in which they were involved. It was found that 167, or precisely 50 per cent, of the 334 teachers taking some work with remedial groups or classes were qualified in these terms. We also asked how many of the teachers who taught any English at all had taken in-service raining courses in the 3 years to January 1973. Of the 2,038 course attendances, 301 had been concerned with remedial teaching. A further 218 had been on the teaching of reading and some of these courses may also have involved a remedial reading element.

In the remedial teaching courses the breakdown of teacher participation by length of course was as follows:

Table 90 Attendance by teachers at courses on remedial education

(vii) Accommodation for remedial groups and classes

In their written and oral evidence several teachers told the Committee of remedial classes and groups which had their lessons in entirely unsuitable rooms, even at times in corridors and cloakrooms. The questionnaire sought to determine whether the heads of the sample schools felt their accommodation for these pupils to be suitable. In framing the questions we had in mind the recommendation of the Newsom Report that accommodation for remedial pupils should provide them with a stimulus. Commenting in 1971 on the Newsom recommendations, the DES pamphlet Slow Learners in Secondary Schools (Education Survey 15) said:

'If an imaginative curriculum on Newsom lines is to emerge with good facilities for personal and social development to compensate for the social disadvantages of many of these pupils, a great deal of thought will need to be given to the provision of better designed accommodation than many enjoy at present'.

THE PUPILS AND THEIR WORK

25.31 The following table has been derived from the detailed tables of English activities, Tables 96 and 97.

Table 91 Time spent on different English activities by type of class - 12 and 14 year olds

A number of general observations may be made upon this table:

(i) All the 12 year olds were allocated more time in English than the 14 year olds. Most noticeable was the fact that they spent 10 minutes longer on language study than the older pupils.

(ii) 12 year old 'remedial' pupils spent almost an hour more on English than 'all 12 year old' pupils. The extra time was taken up by 24 minutes more on language study, 15 minutes more on reading and 14 minutes more on writing, while the time spent on oral work remained the same.

(iii) 14 year old 'non-exam' pupils spent more time on writing than others of their age. The excess of 11 minutes over the average time on writing for 'all 14 year olds' was not reflected in the remedial classes.

(iv) The time given to oral work with 12 year olds was significantly less than that with 14 year olds.

The following observations are among those which may be made from an analysis of Tables 96 and 97.

(i) Class discussion on the basis of topics chosen by the teacher is the most commonly encountered activity in oral English. With one exception, over half of all the groups were involved in it at some time during the week. In the 12 year old remedial group a lower proportion of the pupils (40 per cent) spent time on this activity, though 24 per cent were allowed to choose their own subjects for class discussion.

(ii) We would have expected that a greater proportion of pupils would be allowed, indeed encouraged, to choose their own topics for discussion, but the teacher-chosen topics remained predominant.

(iii) Group discussion still occupies a relatively minor place, and a higher proportion of classes spent more time on full class discussion than on group discussion. Indeed, no more than 10 per cent of the pupils in any of our categories experienced the latter during the survey week.

(iv) Improvised drama was taken by over one third of the 12 year olds, but only 17 per cent of the less able 14 year olds. Fewer than 10 per cent of the 'examination' 14 year olds spent time on it, which suggests that it was not considered to be truly 'serious' work. Those children who spent time on this activity tended to have about half an hour on it, the 'remedial' children of both ages marginally less.

(v) For the older children the emphasis shifted from improvised drama to drama from a printed text, particularly in the classes with examination goals, where nearly three times as many pupils were occupied on the latter as on the former. For remedial and non-exam pupils the shift was less marked.

(vi) Many more of the remedial classes of both age groups listened to broadcasts, records or tapes in schools. In the younger age group this applied to 30 per cent of remedial pupils, compared with 14 per cent of 'all 12 year olds'. The corresponding figures for 14 year olds were 45 per cent of remedial pupils and 20 per cent of all pupils, with 28 per cent for the non-examination group. The usual amount of time given to this activity was half an hour, though substantially less for the non-remedial 12 year olds.

(i) From 12 to 14 there was some decline in the amount of the time given to the writing of stories and plays. Nevertheless, it continued to occupy an important place in comparison with the other writing activities.

(ii) A third of 12 year olds and slightly fewer of the older pupils spent time on writing from personal experience. It was most common among the 14 year olds without examination objectives, but this was not equally true of the 14 year old remedial pupils.

(iii) The writing of verse was a relatively uncommon activity, performed more often by the younger and more able pupils. Those few 14 year olds who did produce verse were on average occupied in the activity a little longer than the 12 year olds, and among these older pupils it was most common in the examination classes.

(iv) For each age group the proportion of pupils engaged in expository writing was similar for all ability groups, the remedial pupils giving only slightly less time to it.

(v) The writing of description was more commonly to be found among the younger pupils and the less able of both age groups. The average times spent on it were 23 minutes for all 12 year olds and 29 minutes for all 14 year olds: for the remedial pupils rather less.

(vi) Letter writing was an activity pursued by a higher proportion of older pupils. The average time for all pupils who did any of this work was 25 minutes, and at both ages it involved a higher proportion of the remedial pupils than the others.

(vii) More than a third of the pupils of both ages and all ability groups were engaged in reproductive writing, which we defined as 'writing in pupil's own words of material derived from printed or oral sources'. Invariably the work occupied more than half an hour. A higher proportion of the less able pupils was involved, particularly among the 12 year olds, where the comparative figures were 56 per cent of the remedial and 36 per cent of the whole age group. This pattern was substantially similar to that of pupils occupied with copying printed material and written corrections. A higher proportion of the less able pupils was occupied on these more mechanical and less demanding aspects of English. Taking the three activities together it can be seen from Table 92 below that the less able pupils spent a higher percentage of their writing time in copying and reproductive work and written corrections.

Table 92 Proportion of time spent by 12 and 14 year olds on copying and reproductive work and written corrections, by type of class

(iii) Language study

Language work in schools tends to be carried out in one of two ways:

Either: it is taught in the context of the rest of the pupil's English work, as an activity arising naturally from language in use by the pupil or his class, in which case we have termed it 'Related Language'.

Or: it is the subject of a completely separate study, usually in lessons set aside for that specific purpose. In this case we have called it 'Isolated Language'.

Table 93 Categories of language activity

From Table 97 we took the proportions of total language time spent on each of the language activities, and divided them into the 'isolated' and 'related' categories. The totals of the two categories are given in Diagram 16.

The results in Diagram 16 indicate a preponderance of isolated language work. Only for the 14 year old examination group does the proportion of related language work exceed 50 per cent, while for the remedial and non-examination pupils the scale is weighted, sometimes heavily, in favour of isolated language work.

Expressed in terms of the proportion of total language study time the three most common features are comprehension, vocabulary and grammar. Between them they account for 70 per cent of all the time spent on language study.

Table 94 Proportions of time spent by 12 and 14 year old pupils on comprehension, vocabulary, and grammar, by type of class

The average time devoted to language study declined from age 12 to 14, but comprehension was an exception to the general tendency. In fact the amount of time it received increased slightly between the two age points.

At age 12 a higher proportion of the remedial pupils (56.1 per cent) spent time on comprehension than 'All 12 year olds' (34.0 per cent). However, the emphasis was usually strongly in favour of comprehension exercises, and it was noticeable how few of the 12 year old remedial classes spent time on comprehension by way of discussion.

(iv) Reading

Table 95 below contrasts the reading activities of pupils of different ages and types of class. The table, which is drawn from the data in Tables 96 and 97, divides the reading experience into three parts as follows:

(1) Private reading - which comprises reading of both fiction and non-fiction, group or class discussion based on private reading, and poetry.

(2) Class reading - which comprises reading of both fiction and non-fiction, group or class discussion based on class reading, and poetry.

(3) Reading for topic work or skills.

(i) There is, from the evidence of Table 95, a distinct difference between the opportunities that the different classes have for stimulating reading. The two remedial groups are almost equal in the relatively small proportion they experience, 52.8 per cent for 12 year olds and 51.8 per cent for 14 year olds, compared with 79.1 per cent and 84.0 per cent respectively for all pupils in the age groups.

(ii) Table 96 shows that two of the most common reading activities for all children are private reading of fiction and class reading of fiction leading to class discussion. Only in the case of the two remedial groups is the frequency of these two activities eclipsed by the proportion of children (68.2 per cent of 12 year olds and 54.7 per cent of 14 year olds) who spend time on reading for skills. Table 97 also shows that the remedial pupils spent almost half their reading time in the kind of reading associated with topics or projects and that which is designed directly to build up reading skills.

(iii) Table 97 makes clear that group discussion based on reading is less common than class discussion for pupils of both ages and all abilities. Thus an opportunity for exploratory talk and the interplay of ideas is relatively little exploited.

(iv) From Table 96 it can be seen that the 14 year olds in remedial groups in our sample had no experience of certain activities in the course of the week. These were the private reading of fiction leading to class or group discussion, class reading of non-fiction leading to group discussion, and the private reading of poetry. This seems to suggest that although these pupils spent about three quarters of an hour a week on reading they were seldom given an opportunity to develop their understanding of what they had read by talking about it, among themselves or with their teachers.

Table 96 English activities of 12 and 14 year olds by type of class (l)

Table 97 English activities of 12 and 14 year olds by type of class (ll)