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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
Chapter 8 The school community
'He was the first adult I'd ever met ... who didn't come the adult over us, didn't use his strength, and won us over by persuasion.' Colin Maclnnes Absolute Beginners
175. The previous two chapters dealt with certain features of the school's communal life, the shared activities and the spiritual influences. In this chapter we are especially concerned with the relations of boys and girls,with their teachers as reflected in discipline and care for the pupils' personal welfare. The heads of schools in our survey have supplied much of the evidence; and a collection of essays by girls who have recently left school at fifteen has supplied the pupils' view. (These ex-pupils were from many different schools, none of them in our survey.) 176. Since young people are often under fire these days over matters of behaviour we asked the heads to write to us fully and frankly about general standards of conduct, and about the forms of discipline used in school and, as far as they knew, at home. We are grateful for the thoughtful answers we received. Mindful of the warning of one correspondent that 'it is treacherously easy for people who have never had to control groups of children' (though some of us have) 'to tell teachers how it ought to be done', we are glad to be able to draw extensively on the experience of the teachers themselves. 177. Heads are quite emphatic that by far the majority of boys and girls, in or out of school, give no cause for anxiety about their general standards of behaviour. Restraints have to be imposed on natural boisterousness, but most pupils, though cheerfully outspoken and less in awe of adults than earlier generations, will accept such restraints and see their point. 'Ninety-nine per cent accept the rules.'Many deplore what they feel is a common misrepresentation of young people's attitudes. 'For all the ballyhoo in the newspapers, I am sure that children are kinder, more tolerant, and have a far wider understanding than they used to have.'178. Some heads are bitterly angry about the harm done to secondary modern schools by grossly exaggerated accounts of indiscipline - which often make it very difficult to recruit staff. On the other hand, they do not disguise their concern about the behaviour of a minority of pupils. Here, a distinction has to be drawn between the deliberate flouting of rules and generally antisocial behaviour in school, and misconduct outside school which is liable to bring the delinquents before the courts. Estimates of the size of the first group vary from one to ten per cent of any one school's pupils, the higher figure appearing in relatively few schools and almost exclusively in problem areas. The second group, of those who are, or who seem in grave danger of becoming, delinquents in the technical sense, is very much smaller, and again, they are closely associated with problems of abnormal home conditions. Emotional disturbance is often associated with delinquency. The majority of delinquents are of poor intelligence, but there are able boys who get into trouble because of their desire for excitement. The apparent association between poor intelligence and delinquency may partly, at least, be explained, as many of the heads who wrote to us suggest, by the fact that it is the stupid who get caught most easily. Delinquency in the technical sense is far more common among boys than girls. 179. On sexual behaviour, very little anxiety is expressed about boys under sixteen still at school, or about the relations between girls and boys in mixed schools. For the most part they are said to get along amicably enough with their largely separate lives. The markedly earlier maturity of girls compared with boys of the thirteen to sixteen age group is probably significant here. Where individual boy and girl friendships do develop among the older pupils, this is sometimes found to have a steadying rather than harmful effect. There is concern, however, about the relationships of some girls with older youths and men outside school. Most heads acknowledge that they simply cannot assess the size of this problem; some incline to think it is smaller than the girls' loose chatter and outwardly precocious behaviour often suggests. Of those girls who come before the courts as in need of moral care and protection, many, though not all, have distressing histories of neglect and instability at home. But apart from these extreme cases, too many girls appear to go their way without supervision by their parents. Girls' schools in particular are conscious of their need to give positive guidance, and stress the value of having married women on their staff willing to discuss sexual behaviour frankly with their pupils. Many parents for their part seem only too glad for the schools to relieve them of a responsibility they find difficult. 180. Again and again, the role of the parents and of the home is stressed. Since the majority of pupils cause little or no anxiety, it is to be expected that the majority of parents are careful of their children's well-being. And so the schools testify. 'We have reason to be grateful for the home influence of pupils in this school.'This is not necessarily confined to 'better' neighbourhoods. One head, in an old industrial district, which he describes as 'a typical Coronation Street area', affirms: 'I feel that the large majority of parents are doing their best, and that there is a wholesome atmosphere in the homes.'School and local community are closely identified. 'We are very much involved in whatever happens to the children and their parents - if they are in trouble, so are we, and we share their joy as well.' He adds, however, 'the parents are often over-generous in material things, and under-generous in giving their time to their children.' And this is echoed from another school, this time in a small country town: 'The parents are fond of their children and go to great lengths to provide them with the things they want - football boots, uniforms, bicycles, pocket money ... but it is not generally their custom to be with their children very much, certainly at this age, and the children tend, therefore, to be largely unsupervised. Nobody worries very much unless the child gets into trouble of some sort.'Another head finds this particular lack, of parents and children spending time together, especially common among the less able pupils: '... as one examines the backgrounds of these pupils, descending from the able to the less able, the more one finds them being left to their own devices. At the bottom ... they appear to be quite independent, but not knowing what to do with their independence.'181. Many heads are concerned at the number of boys and girls who go home to an empty house, and suggest that the harmful effects of this on adolescents are not recognised because they are not so obvious as with younger children. There is no easy solution to this, at a time when more and more married women are taking jobs outside the home and are being urged to do so in the national economic interest; but this evidence directly reinforces, in our opinion, the need for providing more activities under the aegis of the school over a longer school day. 182. Boys and girls left continually on their own tend to get into more or less serious mischief. Sometimes there appears to be no tradition in the area of family life, in the sense of parents and children doing things together, although the children may be physically well cared for. 'Some girls are given three and sixpence to ten shillings [17½p to 50p] a night to 'clear out and amuse yourself'.' Often, the majority of mothers are working, fathers may be on shift work and there are very few waking hours in the day when adults and children can spend time together. A mother's absence sometimes puts too early a responsibility on the girls. 'In many homes where the mother is in full-time employment, older girls almost take charge of the home and of the younger children. They often make decisions in the absence of parents, who then cannot understand why they refuse to accept their authority when they are with them.'With this we can match the description of the normal start to her school day by a fourteen year old girl in one of our problem areas. She wrote the account as part other work for her English teacher, and was not apparently conscious of particular hardship. 'Getting up'183. 'Discipline varies considerably, but real difficulties in the school occur only when the home and school are at cross purposes and the child attempts to play one against the other.' A conflict of standards operates to the child's disadvantage. Schools, for example, vigorously prohibit smoking and disobedience usually incurs the severest penalties. Some parents not only give their children cigarettes as a bribe for good behaviour at home but also resent the restrictions at school. 'If he's not smoking yours and he's not smoking mine, what business is it of yours anyway?'Truancy may be condoned, or deliberately encouraged, and the official process of following up the offenders sometimes operates too slowly. Eventually the cases come before the courts, and the parents are fined, but the children meanwhile have missed long stretches of schooling - fourteen weeks in one example quoted to us. 184. Nevertheless, inside their own walls the schools have to devise a pattern of discipline to regulate their special community. Most of them see it as a dual task of maintaining order, and of providing positive incentives to good behaviour, with opportunities for individuals to exercise personal responsibility. 'The school believes, if it is to work efficiently and smoothly, that there must be order, but that if this is secured by repression and excessive regimentation, then it has failed in its aim to train for life.'Discipline should consist in helping the pupils 'towards a lasting self-discipline, rather than a system of regimentation, whistle blowing and shouting'. But the same head points out that overcrowding and old and inconvenient buildings with narrow corridors can often oblige schools to regiment movement far more than they would choose to do. 185. The commonest penalties for offending against the school's code include detention (much disliked by pupils), loss of house points, and being 'put on report', i.e. having to report and show work at regular intervals to the head. Among constructive attempts to fit the punishment to the crime, are playground litter duty, for those who are careless and untidy in the use of the school buildings, and contributions towards repair and replacement of damaged property. 186. We asked about corporal punishment for the age groups of pupils with whom we are concerned. Many heads have written most thoughtfully on this, some expressing firm convictions, others doubts. We are bound to record that nearly all find it necessary to retain corporal punishment as the ultimate sanction for boys. It is rare in girls' schools, though it exists, and in practice appears to be very seldom applied to girls in coeducational schools. Many heads stress, however, that they regard this ultimate deterrent as effective only if it is used exceptionally; that they are finding less and less need to resort to it; and that they look forward to a day when it will cease to be needed altogether. 'The availability of corporal punishment is an absolute necessity in schools of this type. Without this resource ... a few children would jeopardise the future of many ... I do not relish or indulge in corporal punishment, but children know it is available if they force me to use it - such occasions are now rare.'Many agree that while it is sometimes effective and acceptable with younger pupils, it is much less effective with older adolescents. They have even more doubts if the pupils concerned are from homes where physical violence is familiar, and stress the need to recognise that some antisocial behaviour reflects serious emotional disturbance. 'Punishments do not work when the misdemeanours are the outward and visible sign of a maladjusted, dull or emotionally disturbed child.'187. But perhaps some of the most illuminating comments are on the kind of situation which leads to serious indiscipline. Many of the heads who most firmly defend their need to resort to corporal punishment also freely acknowledge many cases of indiscipline need never arise, if only they had smaller classes and more experienced teachers. As it is, rapid changes and shortages of staff may lead to young, inexperienced teachers being asked to take large forms of fourteen and fifteen year olds. If, in addition, the group is made up of rather dull pupils whom it is far more difficult to interest, a situation can very quickly develop in which the head is bound to intervene. Unlucky conflicts are not confined to inexperienced teachers; there are some seasoned teachers, as one head ruefully admits, who 'positively create problems' by their lack of perception and inability to make effective personal contact. Our evidence is emphatic that large classes, especially in cramped or overcrowded rooms, intensify the problems of discipline and demand especially skilled and experienced teachers. 188. The views on school discipline expressed by the recent leavers provide an interesting comparison. First, some of their most intense dislike is directed at relatively minor matters, especially rules over uniform. These are an irritation to the majority of the girls although a few speak of uniform with approval. 'We were made to have a maroon uniform which I really detest.'Since our commentators were all girls, perhaps it is to be expected that they felt strongly over appearance, although clearly a question of adult status enters into the matter as well. But the statistics from our own survey confirm that among both girls and boys, the wearing of uniform is evaded by many of its older pupils, and especially by the fourth year pupils in the lower ability ranges. Percentage of pupils NOT wearing uniform in schools where it is expected in the fourth year:
189. Apart from uniform, there is a general dislike of what they see as an excess of trivial rules, but an equally intense dislike of disorder and inconsistency. 'There were so many rules that no one could ever remember them, but no actual discipline as such. No two teachers were alike. This left us in a state of perpetual unbalance.'They agree completely with the heads in feeling that much discontent arises from a combination of young and inexperienced teachers, too large classes, and too frequent changes of teacher. 'I think that what went wrong with us, our teachers were so young they could not control us.'190. We asked, especially, about incentives which proved effective with our pupils. Many heads stress the need for a public word of praise and recognition, wherever praise is due, (with the corollary that 'shortcomings in work and conduct are better dealt with individually and privately'). Many urge the importance of ensuring that the less able pupils have their share of the best facilities and equipment and of the best teachers: 'Perhaps the most important thing is to make it clear that the less able youngsters (and the fourth year leavers) get a fair share of the best staff, the best rooms, the most interesting, e.g. practical, subjects, special jobs, etc. To this end my deputy, my senior master and myself each teach the fourth year leavers and the third year lower forms pretty substantially.'Not all schools manage successfully to apply this principle of giving manifestly equal treatment. And it is frequently acknowledged, regretfully, that the brunt of staff changes and handling by temporary or unqualified teachers often has to be borne by the groups of 'ordinary', average pupils, whereas the very bright and the extremely backward tend to have their special needs safeguarded. 191. The majority of schools make use of house systems, with awards for good work and behaviour as well as for competitive sport. A few large, new schools exist whose buildings have been designed on a house basis, and in which the house units can operate as small communities in themselves, with a physical identity. But this is exceptional, and the typical day school operates its houses despite, rather than aided by, its buildings. Most schools still clearly feel that this is an effective way of developing group loyalties or providing opportunities for service; just a few have doubts as to how far older pupils who are within sight of leaving may really feel involved in what are inevitably somewhat artificial institutions. 192. We have to acknowledge with many of the heads that there appears to be no universally effective incentive. What 'works' is often a highly individual matter. It depends essentially upon a relation of mutual respect between a pupil and a particular teacher, and on the pupils feeling that someone is personally interested in their progress. So the pupils confirm. 'In my last year I had a very nice form mistress who treated us more like girls who were on the verge of leaving school and going out to work and we got on very well together.'193. The personal touch counts for even more in the matter of welfare. Good schools everywhere have traditionally made it their business to look after their pupils personally as well as to teach them in lessons, but this aspect of education is demanding increasing thought. There are more very large schools, and the need to have some system for making sure the individual pupil is not lost sight of is more pronounced. There is much more frequent coming and going of staff, and therefore less likelihood than there once was of an accumulation of knowledge in the staffroom not only of all the pupils in the school, but often of their brothers and sisters and parents before them, and indeed of the whole neighbourhood. It is, too, becoming apparent that there may be a great deal more to learn about individual boys and girls: the causes of lack of progress in school may be personal and complex, not to be assigned simply to limited intelligence or poor teaching. 194. Schools tell us of systems, some of them very thoughtfully elaborated, of tutors or form teachers or housemasters, and of regular staff meetings to discuss the problems of individual pupils. As we see it, there are two basic needs to be met, by whatever arrangements a school finds practicable in its circumstances. One is to ensure that sufficient factual knowledge is built up of the background and general circumstances of the individual pupil. The other is to try to ensure that as far as possible any boy or girl will have a natural confidant to turn to. This is more difficult to achieve, because questions of mutual confidence and personality are involved, and the most efficient system cannot guarantee that pupil and appointed tutor will naturally like each other. (Or that the tutor will still be there in a year's time.) The pupils turn instinctively for personal support to some particular teacher who is sympathetic, whether or not he or she has any official tutorial status. 'One of the lessons I enjoyed was French. The teacher who took us was most understanding, and if I had been in trouble of any kind he would have been the one I would have gone to.'195. Most schools see value in creating a corps of prefects and monitors, which sets an example of service and provides opportunities to exercise leadership at many levels. The non-prefects are not always impressed: 'The school was overrun with prefects and monitors who could not control the rest of us and were wasting their time.'A few heads suggest that a less authoritarian organisation may be more appropriate to present day concepts, and are anxious to find ways in which all the older pupils can be given personal responsibility. 196. One way may lie through community service projects. Our evidence describes not only fund-raising activities for charitable causes, but also sustained enterprises in the local community involving planning, organisation, and imaginative effort by groups of pupils. Some examples quoted include voluntary assistance in the local hospitals, decorating a community centre, making and repairing toys for nursery and infant schools and individual service in schemes for helping elderly or invalid persons: 'they shop, fetch medicine, exchange library books, and just visit and cheer the aged with their youthful gaiety'. There is a double value, in the usefulness of the service itself, and in the satisfaction of the boys and girls concerned in doing a real job. The pupils who are restive and feel themselves outgrowing the interests of a purely internal school society may especially respond to these more adult responsibilities. One headmistress writes: 'There have been girls going through a difficult time, and we have found a spell away from school in quite different surroundings has worked wonders. I have a strictly unofficial working arrangement with three infant and nursery schools in the neighbourhood where there are very understanding headmistresses. A troublesome girl can become a most reasonable young lady when helping to tell stories at dinner time to infants, or helping to serve meals or to dress and undress young children. Most important of all, when she has had the status of a young adult for a few weeks she seems to gain in poise and confidence in herself, which halts the downward trend.'197. We find ourselves coming back and back to this need to make some gesture of recognising the more adult status of the older pupils, even those who are troublesome or not very bright, and who do not seem responsive. It is not easy to contrive, even socially, inside most school buildings. The head of a large comprehensive school comments: 'We still have to improvise social accommodation in premises primarily designed for instruction and not for being lived in.'The introduction of more 'social' areas and common rooms for the older pupils could have long term educational consequences. 198. Another factor which can make for difficulties in giving more privileges to the older pupils is the wide age range in secondary schools. As long as the majority of pupils have been leaving at the age of fifteen, inevitably the weight of the modern school population has been at the younger end. And although there is no single or common age, in years and months, at which the break between childhood or adolescence may be said to begin, certainly the fourteen or fifteen or sixteen year olds are very different persons from the eleven or twelve year olds. We see some advantages in a more homogeneous adolescent community, and are glad that the Minister has invited the Council to undertake an enquiry into the whole question of the age of transfer from primary to secondary education. 199. We have tried to let the teachers and the pupils speak for themselves. What they have to say leads us to the following conclusions. Most schools clearly have the welfare of their pupils very much at heart. The problem of serious indiscipline is relatively small, and most intractable in the areas where the social forces outside are working against the school. But at a less serious level, some of the older boys and girls, especially among the academically less successful, are impatient of what seem to them childishly trivial 'rules'; they have a deep need for order, but are irked at the contrast between the independence and often quite heavy adult responsibilities which some of them know outside school, and their lack of status in school, even though they acknowledge the personal kindness of many of their teachers. They are not necessarily grown-up or logical in the reasons which weigh heavily with them: 'I left school at fifteen because of all this discipline and because the school uniform was navy blue' is a not untypical statement. 200. Anything which can serve to emphasise the status of the older pupils is to be welcomed here, in the context of the work, in the design of the buildings, and in the internal organisation of the community. We recognise the value many schools continue to find in traditional forms of social organisation, but think they would be wise to seek also other ways of distributing responsibility. 'Training for leadership', except in very limited spheres, becomes an increasingly difficult principle to apply to the education of large numbers of boys and girls who almost by definition are not outstanding, and who are generally much less likely to become members of an élite at school or afterwards. It may be that learning to become a reliable member of a group of equals is, for many, a better general preparation for life. It is notable that in the world of adult employment more and more industries seem to be splitting up responsibility and placing an emphasis on team work. In the youth service, the 'self-programming' group reflects the same trend. As larger numbers of older pupils remain longer at school, more subtle systems of sharing responsibility and developing initiative may have to be found. Community service projects appear to offer particularly satisfying possibilities. 201. We share the disquiet of those heads who feel that corporal punishment is likely to delay, rather than promote, the growth of self-discipline, and that it is humiliating to staff and pupils. We especially deplore such punishment for older adolescent girls, and the experience of many girls' schools, not all in 'easy' areas, confirms that other sanctions can be effective. We realise that the presence in a school of even one or two exceptionally difficult pupils can have a quite disproportionately disturbing and disruptive influence. No blanket recipe for dealing with these cases is possible, since treatment has to be related to the individual situation. Sometimes, removal to entirely new surroundings may be in the best interests of the pupil concerned and of the rest of the pupils affected - perhaps by transfer to another school, with mutual agreement between heads, or to special schools or classes for the maladjusted. Sometimes a normal boarding school may offer a solution for pupils who cannot be helped except by removing them entirely from their home environment. There are dangers in making it too easy for schools to get rid of their misfits, and we do not think removal ought to be resorted to except in extreme cases; but where the interests of everyone concerned require this, some simplification of administrative procedure is desirable. 202. The schools also need the support of every other administrative agency which deals with adolescents still at school. Our attention has been drawn particularly to difficulties of dealing with the hard core of truancy, despite the strenuous efforts of educational welfare officers. Evidence from two local authority areas, of contrasting types and in different parts of the country, indicates that often when the cases come before the courts nugatory [trifling] fines, even for persistent offences, may confirm the parents in their belief that school attendance is not important. (1) It is essential that magistrates should appreciate that in this exercise of their function they are part of the educational system and have the responsibility to support it. 203. It seems clear that even in good buildings and a generally healthy school, large classes, rapid turnover of staff, and too many young and inexperienced teachers may undermine orderly working and cause the less able pupils to give up trying. In physically cramped buildings in slum surroundings which offer no other outlet for youthful energies, the situation may become explosive. All that was said in chapter 3 in relation to the slum schools is confirmed again here, on the need for improved buildings and for incentives to make good teachers stay. 204. The schools cannot do the job alone, and parents cannot delegate their responsibility for guiding their children. Many situations would be helped simply by the schools knowing more of the home circumstances and the parents knowing more of what goes on in school. All existing links, such as parent-teacher associations, open days, invitations to school functions and concerts, conferences, regular school reports, and most of all, informal conversations between teachers and parents, are extremely valuable. But there is a percentage of homes - and in some districts, a majority - which such arrangements do not touch. In dealing with these problems, the schools, and the parents, need special help. There may be a strong case for having additional members of staff who have special responsibilities for home visiting, and who act as liaison officers with all the other medical, welfare and child care services in the district. This also implies a need for teachers whose training has included some realistic sociological studies. 205. Positive guidance to boys and girls on sexual morals is essential, with quite specific discussion of the problems they will face. We include in the appendix to this report an account of how one school sets about this task. Advice to the parents on dealing with the problems of their children's physical and emotional adolescence may be equally needed, and should be easily available, whether through the school or through the health and welfare services. 206. In the general context of sex education in the widest sense, we think it important that boys and girls should have opportunities to meet members of the opposite sex in a helpful and educative environment. This is not to advocate coeducational schools to the exclusion of others. Some single-sex schools successfully run joint recreational activities with neighbouring schools, so as to bring boys and girls together for orchestras, choirs, drama, debates, conferences, dances and social gatherings of many kinds. Others again encourage their pupils to join mixed youth clubs in the area. The important point is that schools of whatever type should recognise the need and contrive to provide appropriate opportunities. 207. In matters of personal welfare, the most natural advisers of most boys and girls are their parents, but care on the part of the school to build up knowledge of the individual pupils, and personal supervision by some member of staff, cannot be other than helpful. Much depends on thoughtful and efficient organisation, but even more fundamental are the personal relations which exist between teachers and pupils. We leave the last word with a head: 'The great thing is to like them. If you don't, they'll know instinctively and you'll get nowhere with them.'Recommendations (a) Every effort should be made to emphasise the status of the older pupils, through school organisation and in the design of school buildings. (para. 200) (b) We welcome interest in developing group responsibilities, and see a particular value in community service projects. (paras. 196, 200) (c) Corporal punishment for the older pupil is likely to delay, rather than promote, the growth of self-discipline. It is humiliating for both the pupils and the staff. We especially deplore such punishment for adolescent girls. (para. 201) (d) There is urgent need to strengthen all existing links between home and school, and in difficult areas to create new ones, as, for example, in the appointment of members of staff with special liaison or home visiting responsibilities. (para. 204) (e) Positive and realistic 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. (paras. 205, 206) (f) It is of the greatest importance for schools to build up a knowledge of individual pupils and to devise some system of supervising their personal welfare. (paras. 193, 194, 207) Footnote (1) As one of our contributors points out:
In the other area cited, an investigation of court decisions over the period of a year showed that:
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