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Newsom (1963) Notes on the text
Part 1 Findings
Part 2 The teaching situation
Part 3 What the survey shows
Appendix I List of witnesses
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The Newsom Report (1963)
Half our future A report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1963
Preliminary pages Foreword
This report is the outcome of a reference given to the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) by my predecessor, Lord Eccles, in March 1961. I am sure there is a need for wide public discussion of many of the Council's findings and recommendations. The teaching profession, the local education authorities and the Government will need to consider, both individually and jointly, the many recommendations that call for new initiatives, particularly in the fields of research and development. But I agree with the Council that there is above all a need for new modes of thought; and a change of heart, on the part of the community as a whole. We who are professionally and constitutionally concerned with the work of the schools cannot hope to discover the true needs of these pupils, and the best means of meeting them, without the backing of widely informed public opinion. We therefore owe a great debt of gratitude to Mr John Newsom and his colleagues on the Council for the skill and care with which they have defined the problem, and so admirably prepared the ground for what I hope will be a general raising of sights in our attitudes towards these pupils. Their potentialities are no less real, and of no less importance, because they do not readily lend themselves to measurement by the conventional criteria of academic achievement. The essential point is that all children should have an equal opportunity of acquiring intelligence, and of developing their talents and abilities to the full. EDWARD BOYLE
[page v] Dear Minister, Your predecessor, Lord Eccles, asked the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) in March, 1961 to advise him on the education of pupils aged 13 to 16 of average and less than average ability. I have much pleasure in submitting our report, Yours sincerely, JOHN NEWSOM (Chairman) The Rt Hon Sir Edward CG Boyle, Bart, MP
Membership of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England)
Mr JH Newsom CBE (Chairman), Joint Managing Director, Longmans Green and Co Ltd. (formerly County Education Officer, Herts)
The Council began work under its present terms of reference in March 1961 under the chairmanship of Lord Amory, who resigned in June 1961, following his appointment as High Commissioner for the United Kingdom in Canada. Dame Anne Godwin (resigned November 1961) and Miss N Newton Smith (resigned December 1961) were also members of the Council during this enquiry. Note The estimated gross cost of the preparation of the report is £12,814 of which £7,264 represents the estimated cost of printing and publication.
Table of contents
List of Statistical Tables, Charts and Diagrams
PART ONE: FINDINGS Chapter 1 Education for all
PART TWO: THE TEACHING SITUATION Chapter 13 What should secondary imply?
Chapter 20 The organisation of the school and the deployment of staff
PART THREE: WHAT THE SURVEY SHOWS Chapter 21 The 1961 survey
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS APPENDICES I List of witnesses
INDEX
List of tables, diagrams and illustrations
Tables 1 The reading tests, 1948-1961
Diagrams 1 Science and crafts centre
Plates [These appeared in the printed version between pages 108 and 109 and can be accessed from the links at the end of Chapter 12.] 1 Typical schools in typical neighbourhoods
Introduction
The most important of our recommendations is implicit in the whole of our report even though it will not be found specifically in the text. We are concerned that the young people whose education we have been considering should receive a greater share of the national resources devoted to education than they have done in the past, and by resources we do not mean solely finance, although this is important. Our pupils constitute, approximately, half the pupils of our secondary schools; they will eventually become half the citizens of this country, half the workers, half the mothers and fathers and half the consumers. Disraeli once said that on the education of the people of this country its future depended and it is in this sense that we have entitled our report Half Our Future. We are concerned that there should be a change of attitude towards these young people not only among many of those who control their education but among the public at large and this cannot be achieved solely, if at all, by administrative action. It involves a change of thinking and even more a change of heart. Our particular recommendations are, nevertheless, within the compass of the Ministry of Education, the local education authorities and the teaching profession. We cannot stress too strongly that the solution to these problems is not necessarily to be found by a reorganisation of the present pattern of secondary education. However large or small the school, whether it is one-sex or coeducational, however wide its range of intellectual ability, the problems peculiar to the pupils we have been considering still remain to be solved. We fully endorse and reaffirm the conclusion reached in the Council's last report that there is an urgent need to raise the school leaving age to sixteen and that a specific date should be announced for the implementation of this decision. We maintain that during the whole secondary period the full-time education of pupils should be either in school or based on a school, despite the fact that we consider it important that the older pupils should have experience outside its confines. We consider that much fuller use should be made of the natural interests of older boys and girls in the work they will eventually undertake and that this fact should be reflected not only in the content of the curriculum but in the method of teaching and, above all, in the attitude of the teacher to the pupil when the pupil is, in effect, a young adult. We do not minimise the importance of maintaining the high educational standards required from the members of the teaching profession when we stress that, for the pupils we are considering, it is of quite exceptional importance that they should have an equally high capacity as teachers. By their very nature these young people require outstanding professional skill and inspiration from those who care for them and we consider that this fact should be recognised both in their training and in the position they hold in the school. It is for these reasons that we have concentrated on these matters which we consider to be the kernel of the problem and have not discussed, as some people would have expected us to do, the organisation of the secondary school pattern throughout the country. We have been impressed by what the schools have achieved since the concept of secondary education for all was initiated. We have been particularly struck by the steady growth in the standards of literacy (described in chapter 21) and there is no sign that the rate of improvement is slackening. But there is some evidence that young people of the same ability who attend recognised private schools and remain there in small classes until well beyond the statutory leaving age can achieve standards very different from those normally found. Moreover in many other countries the pupils remain at school till a later age than in the United Kingdom. From this we deduce that it is not possible to generalise about the capacity of the average and below average until we have had an opportunity of keeping them at school for a longer period and in smaller classes. It is possible that the potential of these children is very much greater than is generally assumed and that the standards they could achieve might surprise us all. The demonstrable improvements of the past decade have happened despite the fact that it is only in the last few years that the majority of the schools have been provided with the buildings, equipment and teaching strength to cope with the situation and even now, as our survey has shown, there are gross deficiencies still to be made up. We agree with the first chairman of the Central Advisory Council, Sir Fred Clark, who said that only after a diagnostic twenty years would it be possible to decide whether a particular structure of secondary education was likely to be beneficial. It is misleading to assess the success of secondary modern schools when they are still a long way from having had this period with adequate resources to achieve their purpose. It is, of course, even more premature to attempt a reasoned judgement on comprehensive and other types of secondary organisation. We make no apologies for recommendations which will involve an increase in public expenditure on the education of the average pupils. Their future role politically, socially and economically is vital to our national life but, even more important, each is an individual whose spirit needs education as much as his body needs nourishment. Without adequate education human life is impoverished. And the bill which has to be presented is not limited merely to full-time education at school. It was not our remit to discuss the contribution which the youth service should make or the need for further education after leaving school; but we may insist that the boys and girls with whom we are concerned need these services as much as any section of the community. Our report is not simply addressed to those who have the power to take administrative action. They need the support, perhaps sometimes the incitement, of an informed public opinion. It is there for the asking. Never before has the cause of education had so much popular support. Why, then, worry? Our anxiety is lest the relatively unspectacular needs of the boys and girls with whom we have been concerned should be overlooked. They have had far more than their fair share of thoroughly unsatisfactory buildings and desperately unsettling changes of staff. Given the opportunities, we have no doubt that they will rise to the challenge which a rapidly developing economy offers no less to them than to their abler brothers and sisters. But there is no time to waste. Half our future is in their hands. We must see that it is in good hands.
Terms of reference
'To consider the education between the ages of 13 and 16 of pupils of average or less than average ability who are or will be following full-time courses either at schools or in establishments of further education. The term education shall be understood to include extra-curricular activities.'
Principal recommendations
(These follow the order of the chapters of the report) In order that the children with whom we are concerned should have an effective secondary education, we recommend that: 1. An immediate announcement should be made that the school leaving age will be raised to sixteen for all pupils entering the secondary schools from September 1965 onwards. 2. A programme of research in teaching techniques designed, particularly, to help pupils whose abilities are artificially depressed by environmental and linguistic handicaps should be instituted by the Ministry. The programme should include an experimental school run in cooperation with a teachers' training college whose staff is specially strengthened for the purpose. 3. An interdepartmental working party should be set up to deal with the general social problems, including education, in slum areas. Particular attention in education should be paid to the need for stability of staffing; the size of schools; and to the design and function of school buildings in these areas as part of the general community provision. 4. (a) All schools should provide a choice of programme, including a range of courses broadly related to occupational interests, for pupils in the fourth and fifth years of a five year course, and should be adequately equipped to do so. (b) Equally, attention should be paid both to the imaginative experience through the arts, and to the personal and social development of the pupils. (c) Excessively fine grading of ability groups should be avoided; more than three broad groupings is probably unnecessary, and groupings in the final years at school should be largely based on subject or course choices. (d) Every effort should be made to emphasise the status of the older pupils both through school organisation and in the design of school buildings. 5. (a) The hours spent in educational activities, including the 'extra-curricular', should be extended for pupils aged fourteen to sixteen. Some experiments by local education authorities and schools in different types of extension of the school day should be encouraged by the Ministry. (b) The implications for the staffing establishment of schools and the conditions of service, including the financial, should be examined; as also should be the demands which would be made by an extended use of school buildings. 6. The Ministry and the local education authorities should undertake a joint survey to establish accurately the scale on which provision for residential courses of all types is available, how far it is meeting demand, and the estimated cost of providing some residential experience for all pupils in the course of their school life, especially for a substantial number of pupils during their final two years at school. 7. The local education authorities should consider a revision of the Agreed Syllabuses for religious instruction to determine whether adequate provision is made for the needs of the older boys and girls with whom we are concerned, and whether they leave sufficient scope for teachers to develop methods which start with the actual problems which the pupils have to face. 8. Positive guidance to adolescent boys and girls on sexual behaviour is essential. This should include the biological, moral, social and personal aspects. Advice to parents on the physical and emotional problems of adolescents should be easily available. Schools of whatever type should contrive to provide opportunities for boys and girls to mix socially in a helpful and educative environment. 9. (a) The school programme in the final year ought to be deliberately outgoing - an initiation into the adult world of work and of leisure. (b) All links with, and knowledge about, the youth employment service, further education, the youth service and adult organisations need strengthening. 10. (a) The schools should provide all sixteen year old leavers with some form of internal leaving certificate, combining an internal assessment with a general school record, irrespective of any external examinations they may take. (b) They should resist external pressures to extend public examinations to pupils for whom they are inappropriate, or over an excessively large part of the programme for any pupils. They have a special responsibility to offer the non-examination pupils an educational experience which is worthwhile. (c) No pupils should be entered for any external examination before the fifth year; schools should look ahead to a situation in which all pupils will be in full-time education to sixteen. 11. The Ministry in conjunction with local education authorities should arrange an experimental building programme, to try out different forms of school organisation and teaching methods in buildings designed for the purpose; at least one such experiment might be run in conjunction with a teachers' training college. 12. Meanwhile action should be continued and, indeed, accelerated to remedy the existing functional deficiencies of schools, especially in relation to provision for practical subjects, science and libraries, by: (a) relieving otherwise good modern buildings of the effects of overcrowding;13. (a) Provision for all practical subjects should be reappraised, and extended workshop and technical facilities provided, whether wholly within the schools themselves or jointly with further education institutions. (b) All secondary schools should be adequately provided with modern audio-visual aids, and with facilities for using them; in particular the planning of secondary schools should take account of the use of television, as a permanent teaching aid of great potential value, and of equipment for foreign language teaching by modern methods. 14. The policies on which the teacher training programme is based should be reconsidered to ensure that a substantial proportion of teachers in the secondary schools receive a training of the 'concurrent' type. 15. The training colleges should be staffed and equipped to enable students to teach pupils of secondary age in one main subject and in at least one, and preferably two, other subjects, with the possibility of a choice of subjects which cuts across the conventional divisions of 'practical' and 'academic' subjects. 16. (a) The training of teachers should include preparation now for the new demands which will be made on them by the raising of the school leaving age. (b) A training requirement for graduates should be introduced at the earliest practicable moment, and the date announced in advance. (c) As an interim measure there should be an emergency programme of in-service courses to help graduates and other teachers who have attained qualified status without training to deal with the problems they encounter in the schools. The content and conditions of the training course for graduates should be reviewed in order to make voluntary training more attractive. 
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