Newsom (1963)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Membership, Contents, Introduction, Principal recommendations

Part 1 Findings
Chapter 1 Education for all
Chapter 2 The pupils, the schools, the problems
Chapter 3 Education in the slums
Chapter 4 Objectives
Chapter 5 Finding approaches
Chapter 6 The school day, homework, extra-curricular activities
Chapter 7 Spiritual and moral development
Chapter 8 The school community
Chapter 9 Going out into the world
Chapter 10 Examinations and assessments
Chapter 11 Building for the future
Chapter 12 The teachers needed

Part 2 The teaching situation
Chapter 13 What should secondary imply?
Chapter 14 An education that makes sense
Chapter 15 Attainments and achievement
Chapter 16 The subjects and the curriculum
Chapter 17 The practical subjects
Chapter 18 Science and mathematics
Chapter 19 The humanities
Chapter 20 School organisation and staff deployment

Part 3 What the survey shows
Chapter 21 The 1961 survey
Chapter 22 The boys and girls
Chapter 23 The work they do
Chapter 24 The men and women who teach them
Chapter 25 The schools they go to

Acknowledgements

Appendix I List of witnesses
Appendix II Sex education
Appendix III Deployment of teachers
Appendix IV Letter to Minister on teacher training
Appendix V Statistical detail

Index

A report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England)

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1963
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Chapter 2 The pupils, the schools, the problems
[pages 10 - 16]

'I can't help feeling wary when I hear anything said about the masses. First you take their faces from 'em by calling 'em the masses, and then you accuse 'em of not having any faces.' JB Priestley Saturn over the water

28. We feel the same wariness in generalising about 'average and below average pupils'. There were well over two and three quarter million boys and girls in maintained secondary schools in 1962, all of them individuals, all different. We must not lose sight of the differences in trying to discover what they have in common. It is, however, useful to put together what is collectively known about 'our pupils', even though the result may not be an exact likeness of any one of them.

29. We took a national sample of secondary modern schools and asked the heads not only to give us a great deal of information about their schools and the local background, but also to complete individual questionnaires on one in three of their fourth year pupils. As a result, we obtained pen portraits of 6,202 fourteen year old boys and girls, who between them represent a cross-sample of all the pupils in those schools, from the ablest to the weakest. The heads gave their own assessments of each pupil's general capacities, as compared with other pupils in that school; in addition, all the pupils in all the schools took an identical test (described in Chapter 21 of this report), so that it was possible to make some comparisons between them, even though they came from many different schools in different parts of the country.

30. A similar procedure was followed with a national sample of comprehensive schools, and with a group of schools specially selected for the known difficulties of their social and physical environment. Full details of both these sections of the survey are given in Part Three. To simplify the general discussion of the survey results, references in this chapter and subsequently are to the secondary modern schools sample only, unless otherwise stated.

31. It was also possible to extract further information which has a bearing on our subject from the National Service Survey results recorded in Vol. II of the Crowther Report. Based on these two sources, a brief description of the pupils in the sample might run something like this. A third of them live on housing estates, which may be bright and modern, like those of the new towns, or drab and ageing, as are some of those built in the early years between the wars. Just under a fifth live in the old and overcrowded centre of some big city or industrial area, where there are few amenities and often a concentration of social problems; for brevity we later refer to these as 'problem' areas. Another fifth of the pupils is made up of boys and girls from rural and from mining districts; and the remainder come from areas which do not fit into any one of these categories and are generally mixed in character.

32. We did not obtain information on the occupations of the fathers of the pupils in our sample, but on the basis of the Crowther Survey, five out of six are likely to be children of manual workers, skilled or unskilled. Many attend schools housed in attractive, post-war buildings, some of them built on the estates on which the pupils live; but many of these new schools are having to cater for many more pupils than they were designed to hold, and two fifths of all the schools in our sample were in seriously inadequate premises. They are rather better off in respect of playing fields, but in the large towns playing fields have sometimes inevitably to be an awkward distance from the school, and the schools in the problem areas come off worst in every way, outdoors and indoors.

33. These boys and girls have seen a good many changes of teacher. Indeed, many of them must have been in their secondary schools longer than most of their teachers. Of the teachers who were on the staff when the pupils entered the schools in 1958, only half the women were still there in 1961, and about two thirds of the men. Not only had many new teachers come, but there had been a great many comings and goings in between.

34. Most boys and girls, in their teachers' opinion, are cooperative and behave well in school; only a small minority, under five per cent of the pupils in the fourth year at school, present serious problems of discipline. The pupils are liable to be absent from school, on average, for about ten days in the course of the year, but usually for acceptable reasons. They do their homework, if any is regularly required of them, but half of all the pupils in the modern schools are not given any homework. Nearly half the boys do some part-time paid job; only a small minority of the girls are so employed, perhaps because more claims are made on them to do domestic chores at home, as the heads of the schools often observe. About a quarter of all pupils belong to some school club or society, and nearly half, including many of the same enthusiasts, to some organisation outside school.

35. Much of this description applies to all the pupils in the schools. It is, however, possible to draw some distinctions between our average and less than average pupils, and the rest. There is a slight, but definite, tendency for the less able pupils to be smaller and to weigh less than the brighter pupils - the puny-looking child, as it turns out, is not so likely to be the studious bookworm. It may well be that there is a comparable development in physical and in mental growth in the years of adolescence - a good deal of medical research suggests that there is; but it is also notable that the less successful children tend to come from the larger families (this is true irrespective of social class or background), and there is some evidence that children in small families tend to be taller and heavier. On the other hand, there are no generally significant physical differences between children from one environment and another apart from the exceptionally adverse areas discussed in the next chapter.

36. It seems that the less able the pupils, the more likely they are to be away from school, for longer, periods, and more often without adequate excuse. They are also very much less likely than their abler fellows to be set homework. It is clearly worth asking how far frequent absence, and the lack of the extra practice which bright pupils get through homework, help to make the weak pupil weaker still. Contrary, perhaps, to what might be expected, there was no evidence, at least as far as the test score was concerned, that school work is adversely affected by pupils doing a part-time job.

37. What kind of places are the schools to which the pupils go? It is as difficult to do justice to them in a few generalisations as it is to describe the pupils.

Last year, there were 3,668 modern schools in England, making up rather more than two thirds of the total of all secondary schools. The 1944 Act changed the name and status of the old senior elementary schools to secondary modern schools, but at first changed little else. When the school leaving age was raised to fifteen in 1947, the country was faced with the enormous task of discovering how to provide an effective secondary education for a large part of the population which had never remained so long at school before. The teachers had to gain their experience on the job, often in old and unsuitable buildings and often without adequate books and equipment. These schools, and the even younger schools which have started up since, have had to plan their development ahead through a period which has seen in every field of education chronic shortages of teachers and overcrowding of classes. Much of the gathered wisdom of the old senior schools was lost in the shattering upheaval of the war, and the newly-designated modern schools had no collective tradition or reputation to support them; on the other hand, the very absence of a set pattern has attracted men and women with a zest for pioneering. As a result, the schools are growing up - for the process is still going on - very varied in character.

38. Over the last eight or ten years, they have been helped by a massive programme of new school building. In the period 1954-61, 1,808 new secondary schools in England and Wales were completed, the majority of them secondary modern schools; before the 1960s are out (1), nearly two thirds of all secondary pupils may be either in new schools or in enlarged older schools. The contrast however, between those schools now housed in new premises, and those still making do in pre-war, sometimes pre-twentieth century, elementary school buildings, grows sharper, and even the most splendid new buildings have not uncommonly been severely overcrowded since the day they opened. Nevertheless, imaginative design and construction, lightness, gay colour in decoration, and attractively laid out grounds, are among the most striking outward signs that the new schools have begun to come into their own.

39. Other changes, just as notable, have been happening inside the buildings, so many and so rapidly that it is doubtful if even the parents of the present pupils can realise just how different schools may be from the places they remember from their own school days. Most schools are making strenuous efforts, to establish contacts with parents, sometimes with poor response: a school doing excellent work can have the dispiriting experience of only a handful of people turning up for a meeting called especially for the parents' benefit. But schools are large and busy places, and there is in any case so much more going on than can easily be absorbed in occasional visits. Communication is still difficult.

40. Probably the development which has caught most public attention is the growth of a variety of courses mainly, but not necessarily, leading to some external examination, for the older and abler pupils. These have undoubtedly been effective in inducing large numbers of boys and girls to stay longer at school, and in convincing their parents that to do so was worth while. Rather more than one pupil in six was staying beyond the minimum leaving age in modern and all-age schools in 1962 over the country as a whole. In some individual schools and areas, the proportion was very much higher. 41. Much else is changing. Visitors to one of the really fortunately placed schools are likely to be struck by the attractiveness of the newer textbooks, the plentiful library books, the well furnished library room. They may see a more generous provision of special rooms and equipment for science, cookery, needlework, woodwork, metalwork, art and crafts in general; and facilities for physical education on a scale which an older generation of pupils never knew. They may find there are subjects on the timetable which never figured in their own experience - a modern language, engineering, or commerce, for example; and certainly if they venture into the classrooms they may find 'old' subjects covering a wider span of interest and being presented in unfamiliar ways. It is possible that the class will not be there at all, because the pupils have gone off to do field work in geography or biology, learning to search out more information for themselves, rather than receiving it all in notes from the teacher. Parents will certainly think the activities in physical education bear little resemblance to the more regimented drill procedures of not so many years ago. They may, if it is an exceptionally well provided school, even be a bit suspicious of the variety of equipment that seems to be supplementing chalk and talk these days - filmstrips, films, records, radio, tape recorders, perhaps television; but they will concede that these pupils are lucky in having many more sources of illustration and interest. Most schools would feel that they have fewer of these aids than they could profitably use. Visitors may find the buildings lighter and brighter and a good deal less austere than their remembered picture of 'school', and they may be aware of a generally easier atmosphere and less formal relation between teachers and pupils. The school notice boards, with their news of clubs and societies, choirs and instrumental music, local expeditions and trips abroad, may suggest the lively sharing of interests which goes on in out of school time.

42. These activities outside the limits of lesson times are a valuable and distinctive feature of school life, not least, perhaps, in the way they are literally widening the pupils' horizons. One outstanding, but by no means unique school, quoted in our evidence, has undertaken in six years sixteen holidays abroad and twenty-six in this country: the programme has included visits to Stratford, Edinburgh and York; geographical surveys in the Isle of Man, Yorkshire and the Lake District; historical studies in Lancashire; cycling and Youth Hostelling trips in many parts of this country; crossing the Norwegian ice cap above Hardanger, traversing mountain ranges in Austria, making a two-hundred mile high level walking tour in Switzerland, walking and climbing in the Dolomites in Northern Italy. Means of helping pupils who could not otherwise afford the journeys have been found, and pupils of every grade of ability have taken part, although the abler boys and girls have undoubtedly participated most.

43. We have dwelt on these aspects of the younger secondary schools first because they are not appreciated as widely as they ought to be. Educational journals week after week carry news of enterprising experiments in ways of making school life still more rewarding, but too little of this trickles through to the general public. Other patient work goes on which is scarcely recorded at all, except in inspection reports, because although immensely valuable, it is not necessarily novel or dramatic in character. Yet knowledge of both sorts of progress is needed, to put into perspective those disturbing accounts which do provide headlines in the national press, when some schools or teachers are overwhelmed by problems of exceptional difficulty. Such situations certainly occur, and we are rightly perturbed when they do: but they are not typical, and they have often been luridly, even inventively presented. A well-informed public opinion could be of great support to the schools, not least to those in the gravest difficulties. Education needs a better communications service.

44. Secondly, we want to affirm quite clearly that the record of secondary education since 1944 is essentially one of progress in the face of formidable obstacles. We have criticisms and anxieties to express in the pages which follow, but they are to be read against this background of substantial success.

45. Why, then, not let well alone? Because very far from all the schools are as happily placed as the one in our generalised and somewhat rosy description; and because, although educationally we are scoring some gratifying hits, this increases concern about the misses. In respect of the physical conditions under which teachers and pupils are required to work, much of what was acknowledged in the Minister's statement in 1958 still has force (2) 'Some are secondary schools only in name or are accommodated in buildings long since out of date which it would not be sensible to improve where they stand ... Others, though satisfactory for smaller numbers, are overcrowded ... Others, again, though adequate in some ways, lack some of the facilities needed for proper secondary education, above all in scientific and technical subjects.' Of the schools in our own sample, only a quarter in 1961 had an adequate library room which they were able to keep for its proper use, and more than another quarter had no library room at all. A third of the schools had no proper science laboratories. Half had no special room for teaching music, and these included many schools in which the single hall had to serve for assembly, gymnasium and dining.

46. The greater the number of people who prove to be educable beyond all previous expectations, the stronger the suspicion grows - and the teachers are among the first to voice it - that the rest may have been underestimated also, and that we are somehow failing a substantial number of young people. At the same time, the stronger the contrast becomes between those who are successful and those who are not, especially judged by those criteria which the world outside school most readily applies. There are differences over the country in the extent to which courses extending beyond the age of fifteen are available, as well as in the proportion of pupils who actually stay on. There are differences within a single school in how well it provides, or is able to provide, for pupils of varying abilities: most of the distinctive courses which have proved so successful have, for understandable historical reasons, so far been designed for the abler pupils. It would be idle to pretend that all the rest of the pupils are satisfied or satisfactory customers.

47. Too many at present seem to sit through lessons with information and exhortation washing over them and leaving very little deposit. Too many appear to be bored and apathetic in school, as some will be in their jobs also. Others are openly impatient. They 'don't see the point' of what they are asked to do, they are conscious of making little progress: 'The reason why I left at fifteen is because I felt that by staying on I should be wasting two years learning nothing. I could have worked harder, but what's the use if you don't get any encouragement?' argues one girl. A headmaster acknowledges, 'There are far too many of our slow and average children who long ago reached saturation point doing tedious and hateful work year after year'. They are provoked not only by the tedium of the work but also by resentment at being treated as children: 'We had the feeling that if they treated us like little children we'd behave like it'. 'The teachers were nice but they just didn't seem to go about teaching us as well as we'd have liked. They couldn't control us because they treated us like children, and even kept telling us we were only children.'

48. These girls and boys must somehow be made much more active partners in their own education. Whatever their natural endowments, they all need to attain self-respect and a reason for wanting to work well. Unless they do, no one can honestly justify extending the educational process by another year for them. Yet these pupils badly need the extra time, to enable them to grow up a little more as persons, to add to their general knowledge and understanding, and to strengthen their attainments. They are going out into a world of extreme complexity, which will certainly make taxing demands on them in their personal lives, if not in their jobs; and even in their jobs, there is no knowing what may lie ten or even five years ahead for any one of them. They will need all the resources the school can give them.

49. Some of their discontent is related to the restiveness of adolescence which affects all young people in some degree. But others, as well as the pupils, are not happy about the situation. Employers complain not only of poor attainments but of the inadequate speech and inability of boys and girls to manage their dealings with other people. 'It is not so much that they are ill-mannered, but that many of them have a complete lack of any social skill.' Other contributors to evidence write to us: 'We feel bound to record our impression that very many of these less gifted young people are socially maladroit, ill at ease in personal relationships, unduly self-regarding and insensitive; their contact even with their peers is often ineffectual; they understandably resent being organised by adults but show little gift for organising themselves'. These are serious criticisms, certainly not applicable to all our pupils, but not, either, easily to be dismissed. This matter of communication affects all aspects of social and intellectual growth. There is a gulf between those who have, and the many who have not, sufficient command of words to be able to listen and discuss rationally; to express ideas and feelings clearly; and even to have any ideas at all. We simply do not know how many people are frustrated in their lives by inability ever to express themselves adequately; or how many never develop intellectually because they lack the words with which to think and to reason. This is a matter as important to economic life as it is to personal living: industrial relations as well as marriages come to grief on failures in communication.

50. The evidence of research increasingly suggests that linguistic inadequacy, disadvantages in social and physical background, and poor attainments in school, are closely associated. Because the forms of speech which are all they ever require for daily use in their homes and the neighbourhoods in which they live are restricted, some boys and girls may never acquire the basic means of learning and their intellectual potential is therefore masked. Perhaps the boy who said 'By the time I reached the secondary school it was all Chinese to me' was nearer the mark than he realised. This cannot explain the difficulties of all our pupils, some of whom enjoy most helpful home conditions. But it may underlie the relative failure of large numbers of boys and girls, and partly account for the undue proportion of children from working-class backgrounds who appear as below-average (3). If this is so, then here is a problem which can be tackled educationally although research and extensive experiment will be needed to discover the right teaching techniques.

51. There remain other handicaps of environment, besides the linguistic, which may be working against the schools or the individual pupils. The next chapter considers the problems of schools in exceptionally underprivileged areas.

Recommendations

(a) Attention should be given to the functional deficiencies of many schools. Some of these deficiencies are due to overcrowding rather than to the age of the buildings, but others are characteristic of buildings which are totally unsuitable and inadequate; the deficiencies from whatever cause affect adversely the secondary education which can be offered to older pupils. (para. 45)

(b) There is an urgent need for research into the problems of environmental and linguistic handicaps, and of experiment in teaching techniques for overcoming the learning difficulties they create. (paras. 49 and 50; cf. also Chap. 12 para. 291)

Footnotes

(1) i.e. when the building programmes for 1960-65 are completed.

(2) Secondary education for all: a new drive HMSO 1958.

(3) The evidence is in Chapter 1 of Part Two, Vol. 11 of 15 to 18. A similar argument is developed in Chapter 21 of this report.