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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 20 The organisation of the school and the deployment of staff
A. ORGANISATION 518. Some forms of school organisation make it easier than others for pupils to recognise the vocational interest which can mean so much to them in their later years at school. Some have a built-in factor of choice which helps to associate pupils with the work they are doing. A head who agrees with the general line of argument we have put forward will naturally test his plans to see if they make it easy for his pupils to feel that the education they are getting is practical and realistic, has vocational interest and relevance, allows some measures of choice and helps them to make wise decisions for themselves. 519. Most heads inherit an established organisation; they adjust it to meet changing needs and their own wishes but they never have quite the free hand that comes to those who build up a new school from the start. This chapter will serve its purpose better if it presents itself with the coveted opportunity of a clean slate. It assumes a four form entry secondary modern school of something over 500 pupils. How will the head set about his task? There are, of course, certain things he will have to take for granted. The size of his school, for instance, and whether it is to be coeducational will have been decided before he is appointed. So, too, will the range of ability it is to serve - whether it is to be a modern or a comprehensive school. But, within this given framework, he is free to make his own plans to realise his general aims. 520. Our terms of reference relate to pupils of average and below-average ability; but the head has to consider the organisation of the whole school including that minority, perhaps a quarter of the total, who are above the median in intelligence. The wide range of ability which all modern schools contain presents real teaching problems. This must find some reflection in the way the school is organised. The commonest form is a simple division by ability, even though it may be half-concealed by various tricks of nomenclature. The head will certainly be aware that 'streaming', which starts well down in the primary schools, is a matter of acute educational controversy. He may decide, as we have done for our part, that this not something on which he can at present make up his mind for two reasons. First, an informed review of the consequences of this form of organisation can only take place when much detailed investigation has been done. Work on this is only now beginning on a substantial scale, and much will depend on what the National Foundation for Educational Research finds out in its new enquiry. Secondly, judgement must start where the practice starts - in the primary school and not in the secondary school with which he, and we, are concerned. Both of us have to deal with an inherited situation. 521. But, while the head may be in a situation of suspended intellectual judgement, he has to make operational decisions. (1) He cannot leave the organisation of his school until the experts have pronounced. And what he decides involves provisional judgements. He may possibly have taught as an assistant in a large school in which there were eight forms to a year, all graded by ability. We doubt, however, if he will regret that his four form entry will prevent such an apparently fine degree of discrimination. He is likely, we think, to feel that on balance this type of organisation would increase the feeling of educational inferiority and rejection in the lower forms without corresponding teaching advantages. 522. Many European countries reject the idea of streaming (except that variety which is involved in the difference between selective and non-selective secondary schools). Instead they keep down, as we used to do, pupils whose work is not good enough to justify promotion. Anybody planning a new school organisation will be interested in their experience, as we have been; and will wish to make further enquiries about it; but it seems very unlikely that he will adopt it. If the head has taught in a small primary school or in one of the very few one form entry schools, he will have had experience of doing without streaming and relying instead on different teaching groups for different subjects within the same form, and on some system of individual assignments. He may well wish to encourage his heads of departments to write something of this kind into their subject schemes of work and indeed to enquire about programmed learning, but this does not mean scrapping any idea of arranging his forms by ability. 523. In a new school the first problem of organisation is to arrange for the initial intake of eleven year olds. It seems most probable that the head will decide on some division by ability to cover the work of the first two or three years. He may hesitate between a straight four-fold grading and a system of 'topping and tailing' with two middle forms of roughly comparable ability, but few will chose any other system. Even in a large modern school it is doubtful whether a finer grading is necessary. 524. Should this system be carried further up the school? Should it go right to the top? It does in most modern schools; and it is probable, therefore, that the head will have this possibility well in the forefront of his mind. But the situation is changing so rapidly that there are several new factors to think about. Two are especially important. They are linked together. How long does he expect his pupils to stay at school? How much value does he put on giving them some freedom of choice? Most heads started teaching when boys and girls usually left school as soon as they were fourteen; until a few years ago nearly all left at fifteen. The older senior elementary school course was one of two years and a bit; the compulsory secondary modern school course is now only four years, (2) and in some districts this is still its normal length, but in large parts of the country a five year course is becoming common for many pupils. This, subject to the necessary Order in Council, is already its statutory length. The presumption that one form of organisation is right for the whole secondary school is not as strong as it was. Almost certainly the head of a new school will want to start his planning on the assumption of a five year course for all - or, at present, for as many as can be persuaded to take it. 525. What are the right tactics to adopt in order to see that as many boys and girls as possible get secondary education to sixteen? The first point is a negative one. It is important to avoid a form of organisation which forces on parents and pupils the necessity of 'signing on' for an 'extended course' if they want to stay at school to sixteen. This can happen where those pupils who are proposing to take an external examination at the end of five years are grouped together in one form from the beginning of the third or fourth year. This usually involves a certain amount of reshuffling between the A and B forms. It carries with it the implication that those who do not elect to enter, or perhaps in some cases are not put into, the examination stream will be leaving when they become fifteen, which is thought of as the normal thing to do. If the head decides on this pattern of organisation he may build up a strong examination form and give valuable opportunities to his abler pupils; but it will be at the expense of the rest. In his school the raising of the minimum school leaving age to sixteen will still amount to a revolution instead of the gentle rounding off of an evolutionary process. 526. The head's problem is to find an organisation which will give his most ordinary pupils the same encouragement as the ablest to get their second wind so that they may finish their school course as strongly and optimistically as they began it. He may remember the change of heart which he himself experienced when in his schooldays his bent for languages or for science was first allowed to influence his timetable. Ten years ago a similar kind of personal stock-taking and readjustment of curriculum for the less able grammar school pupils helped to check the spate of 'premature leaving'. An appetite for a longer secondary education is often created in girls of barely average ability by the provision of special courses which meet their desire for something going beyond school work as they have hitherto known it. If the tonic is to work, it must be an individual prescription. To give shorthand and typewriting to a girl who wants something to do with child care is to invite her to leave at the earliest opportunity. Variety of provision, then, is necessary to fit individual need, capacity and interest. On the whole, the balance of advantage lies with some form of organisation which in the last two years of the five year course takes more account than in the lower forms of the pupils' wishes. An organisation which relies in the senior years on streaming by attainments - by definition the weak point of our boys and girls - is not likely to encourage them voluntarily to complete a five year course. 527. When should this change in organisation be introduced? Those schools which carry out such a reorganisation do so normally either at the beginning of the third or fourth year. It is a difficult decision to make until the fifth year is established on a firm and wide basis. As long as most boys and girls leave as soon as they can, it is rational to feel that they will be more likely to stay if they have 'signed on', so to speak, by the third year. Our advice, however, would be strongly in favour of choosing the fourth year. There are two reasons for this. First, many of the new interests to be catered for are vocational. We think thirteen too young an age at which to give a vocational slant to a pupil's education or to expect him to expect to make a vocational choice. Secondly, as soon as some have 'signed on' the remainder (who today are the majority) will in their own minds have 'signed off'. 528. One way in which organisation can take account of interests is through the provision of carefully defined courses with an occupational bias. They give a centre of unity to the later stages of school life. This need not, however, stand in the way of experience in each of the three main curriculum fields which we have distinguished. Probably some of the work done in each of the three fields will be related to this central theme; some will be the more invigorating for standing apart from it. What the head has to consider from the timetable angle may be illustrated by an actual example. This course is called 'Technical Building'. The fourth year timetable analysis gives the following results. A. Humanities: 410 minutes per week B. Mathematics and science: 530 minutes per week C. 'Practical subjects': 560 minutes per week D. Total school hours per week: 1500 minutes E. Time spent on building (225 minutes) and directly related subjects (e.g. mechanics, maths, architectural history) 680 minutes per week. Total: 905 minutes. 529. Would such a course, and others like it, do what he has in mind? This is probably something which he will find hard to decide. Organisation on a course basis has great merits. It gives its members a feeling of belonging together in an activity that is both purposeful and educational. They have status; and are not isolated units in a nondescript form clearly below the best in the school. There is a rough recognition of differences in ability without loss of face. The academic courses have a different objective, but not a more important one than building is to builders. They are doing something that they have chosen with care, which belongs to the 'real world' and, it may be, to their own future real world. 530. At this point a number of questions arise. First, this course and many like it, is a 'package deal'. The pupil chooses his course. After that he may not do much more choosing. In this school, for instance, he cannot be a builder and a musician, though he could be an engineer and a musician. Secondly, while a boy in the building course will have had a good secondary education which will stand him in good stead whatever he decides to do, there may be a concealed risk that other boys from other courses will be at a disadvantage if they later want to become employed as builders. This is something a head will want to guard against before starting a course with an occupational bias. No career ought to be closed to a boy or girl who did not enter an appropriate occupational course at fourteen. Thirdly, while it is easy to discover good courses with an occupational bias for pupils of average ability, it is not easy to carry the process much further down the line. The number of times that 'General', 'Practical', 'Modern' appear in the list of courses in schools organised in this way tells its own depressing story. The head may well remember how in the war the undoubtedly high morale of those who belonged to a 'private army' was sometimes gained at the expense of those who were left behind in their original units. 531. Another way by which variety, choice and individual prescription can be provided for all pupils is by the system of options and sets which has long existed in grammar schools. This recognises that there must be almost as many reasons why boys and girls choose a particular subject as there are pupils in the set. Some will be there for vocational reasons, others because they like the subject or the teacher, or because they are good at it. The unity which a course engenders is not easy to secure - there is no 'private army' to belong to - but it is easier to arrange to meet individual preferences for unusual combinations of subjects. It allows too, for the study of the same subjects at various depths by different pupils - for handicraft for example, both as a major subject and for recreational use with a smaller time allocation. These possibilities may be especially important to below-average boys and girls. Fortunately for them, they do not need a certificate witnessing to a particular combination of subjects: there is, therefore no pattern externally imposed upon their education beyond the basic demands of literacy and numeracy. It is possible, and necessary, to plan their course to take advantage of whatever talents and interests they have. These are not always the obvious ones. A boy may want to cook, a girl to build a canoe. If the school organisation can bend to make this possible, it may be their educational salvation. 532. If the head decides on a very flexible organisation, he will do so realising the extra work entailed. An organisation of this kind only works successfully if the timetable making is expertly done. The greater the variety offered, the more complicated the task. Once it is agreed that some element of specialist teaching is essential difficulties begin. They accumulate when attention is paid to the need for different subjects for periods of varying lengths - the contrast, for instance, between short, daily practice in French and a continuous spell of craft work to which we have already referred. Timetabling is a difficult art and one that proves more difficult year by year as schools grow bigger and options become more numerous. 533. But, if the organisation stops at the timetable, there will be unnecessary disaster ahead for a good many boys and girls. The curriculum has become a long à la carte menu with all the possibilities of indigestion that this implies. A sound education is only to be secured in this way if each pupil's selection is carefully scrutinised to see that it makes sense not only term by term, but longitudinally in sequence over the years. This involves a clear knowledge by those who advise boys and girls not only of possible subject permutations and combinations but also of what is taught set by set under various subject names. There has to be, so to speak, a book of the school and a book of each pupil. One way of matching them is by a tutorial organisation which provides each pupil with some member of staff to take interest in all of his work year after year - an admirable system where there is sufficient staff stability to make it practicable. Another way, which does not depend quite so much on staff stability, is by a form master system. The important thing is the devolution of responsibility. 534. The complexities of running a school are great. A good head needs skill as well as wisdom and character. Teachers have many opportunities as assistants of learning from one another; when they become heads they have no immediate colleagues to whom they can turn for quick advice. They need help to acquire the new and different skills which are demanded of those who run a school. There are a considerable number of opportunities nowadays for heads to meet together in short courses and conferences to discuss these matters; the demand for them grows. There is need for more. 535. These, then are some of the thoughts which must run through the mind of any head asked to build up a new secondary school, whatever its size. The decisions he finally makes must depend on the resources to his hand. There is no one finally right solution. He, like his pupils, must exploit his strengths, and not try to provide everything that an ideal school would do. There is no ideal school. His resources lie, first in his own school and to some extent are controlled by its size. Formerly small schools offered only restricted opportunities. This was not in the main because they were small, but because they were built and equipped as schools for boys and girls who went to work as soon as they were fourteen. Now that they have older pupils, many small schools have discovered means of fostering individual work and some are providing sufficient variety of experience to meet the educational needs of most of the pupils with whom we are concerned. 536. Of course, a big school can offer a range of vocationally directed courses which is beyond a small school's internal resources. The advantage is important, but not, necessarily decisive. The head of a small school has resources outside his staff and his buildings on which he can draw. He may have pupils - perhaps one or two in a hundred - who have a strong bent which he cannot adequately satisfy though a neighbouring school could. In such instances transfer is right. More frequently he will find that by careful planning with a local technical college he can provide the vocational aspect of a course which a larger school would find from its own resources. If this means sending his boys and girls out into a more adult world for part of their time at school, it may be no bad thing. The head may also be able to draw into the school the part-time help of those in the local community who have special skills not found among his colleagues. The less his school, or any school, is an island to itself the better. If it is to serve this generation it needs to be joined to the mainland of life by a causeway well trodden in both directions.
B. STAFF 537. A head's real struggle comes when he turns from the blueprint of organisation to the deployment of staff. We have said in Chapter 12 something about the qualities needed by those who are going to teach the pupils with whom we are specially concerned and about the education and training which is most likely to make them good teachers. Here we are concerned with the actual problem as, for instance, it faces the head of a four form entry coeducational school of about 500 pupils when he sits down to make his timetable. 538. It is probable on the basis of the knowledge we have gained from our survey that his timetable analysis will show for fourth year pupils the equivalent each week of two days for the humanities, one day for mathematics and science and two for the 'practical subjects ' in the extended sense we have given this term. (3) These are, of course, only rough approximations and the range is considerable. A school, however, which drastically curtails the time spent in one of these fields is not providing a suitable secondary education. Reference to Part Three of this report shows that a few schools are not. It does not matter which is the area of the curriculum that is impoverished; in this trinity none is before or after other since all are necessary. 539. Occasionally what we consider a serious maldistribution of time may be the deliberate result of a different outlook or education from ours and an alternative assessment of the needs of growing boys and girls. This is probably not common. More often it is the result of deficiencies in buildings and of difficulties in staffing. All of us know schools where there is no gymnasium and where, almost as a direct consequence, there is no properly qualified teacher of physical education. All of us know schools where one of the craft rooms is closed for lack of a teacher, or where science is taught in an ordinary classroom by somebody whose knowledge is clearly inadequate. The head of a school in such a position is bound to tailor his timetable to the measure of his staff and his equipment and not, as he would wish, to the growing stature of his pupils. In extreme cases this amounts to a curriculum so grossly disturbed as to justify the sweeping condemnation expressed in the previous paragraph. More often it amounts to a distortion of what the school would like in the balance of individual subjects, although compensating adjustments may keep the three fields reasonably well proportioned. Sometimes pupils have to be given what the staff can teach them, even though the school may feel that this is not the fare best suited to their needs but only the next best. 540. A coeducational secondary modern school of 500 pupils will probably have a staff of thirteen or fourteen assistant masters and nine or ten assistant mistresses. (4) This is enough to fill the vacant places on the timetable, but after what fashion? What kind of background have the teachers? The head's first problem is that there will almost certainly be a fair number of newcomers about whom he knows little or nothing beyond their paper qualifications. A third of the men and half the women are likely to have been with him less than three years, and a good many others will have come and gone during that period. Two or three of his staff will only be teaching part-time; they are probably married women. Nearly half his full-time women assistants are likely to be married. If they have young children, he will learn to dread the winter with its risk of infectious diseases and other illnesses. 541. Some of the teachers will have been students in teachers' training colleges before the last war. They are the professional general practitioners: they provide the most stable and the most flexible part of the staff, but promotion has carried many of them on to more specialised duties. They will have been accustomed to take their own form for both English and arithmetic; but their training and most of their experience in their formative years was with younger boys and girls than those with whom we are mainly concerned. Another group will have come from the general teachers' training colleges since the war. They will have made a deeper study of one, or sometimes two, subjects than their pre-war colleagues did, but this often means that they feel unfitted, certainly in their earlier years of teaching, to teach other subjects. A third group are the men and women who come from the specialised colleges for the 'practical subjects'. Just over a quarter of the staff ought to have this background, but these have been the hardest vacancies to fill so that there may be fewer. There remain the graduate teachers - perhaps four or five all told. We must expect a great increase in their number in the near future as a result of the expansion of the universities and the diversion of students from general training colleges to teach in primary schools. We are warned that many of the new graduates will be untrained. 542. It is with the help of these men and women that the head must make his timetable. One of his main anxieties may well be the staffing of the humanities - an odd situation at a time when every newspaper and every other White Paper proclaims a national shortage of scientists and technologists. The problem in the humanities is one of quality rather than of quantity. By quality we are not of course referring to personal inadequacies of character but to professional deficiencies in knowledge of the subjects and of insight into the problems of teaching. These come from the kind of specialised higher education which many incoming teachers have received, and from the lack of any professional training from which many of them suffer. The gravity of the present situation is known to every head; but, because its effects are to be detected only by a clinical judgement, it is largely concealed from administrators and statisticians. No safety rules prohibit the use of an English classroom because there is nobody qualified to teach English; but, if there is no science teacher, the laboratory will be shut, and the woodwork room will be out of use if there is no handicraft teacher. It is possible, therefore, to see and count the deficiencies in these subjects, and others like them; but in the humanities, the truism that 'every teacher is a teacher of English' is in practice so perverted that it might often as well read 'anybody can teach English'. 543. Out of his staff of twenty-two or twenty-three teachers the head has to find the equivalent of nine full-time teachers to cover this group of subjects. Where can he find them? At first sight this ought not to be difficult. Four fifths of the graduates teaching in modern schools have arts degrees. The trouble is, however, that the way in which they are divided among the arts subjects is very unlike the way in which the schools divide their time between the humanities. Two thirds of the modern schools give more than half their total time allocation for the humanities to English itself. Only a quarter of their graduate teachers with arts degrees have their qualification in English. There are almost as many history graduates as English graduates teaching in modern schools, although more than three times as many periods, and quite often four times, are given to English as to history. The balance of specialisation among training college students is probably not very different, and under present policy they will no longer provide a direct supply of teachers for senior forms in secondary schools. 544. It is clear that the head of a typical school of 500 pupils will have much less difficulty in finding the equivalent of nine teachers for the humanities or English subjects in general than in finding four who are really competent to tackle the intellectually and imaginatively exacting job of teaching English, or one to lead in the equally demanding work of religious instruction. With a head of department post to offer he will probably succeed in getting one specialist English teacher. With luck he may find two. After that he is very likely to have to share out the work between teachers who would rather be doing something else which they are better qualified to undertake. He may very reluctantly be driven to dividing the English of one form between several teachers, perhaps giving 'poetry' to one and 'composition' to another. This sort of expedient happens far too often, and will continue to occur as long as the supply and training position is unchanged. The boys and girls of our report are the victims of this kind of situation more often than they should be. If there is only one teacher specially qualified to teach English, he cannot be everywhere in a subject which has so many periods to fill. If he is not employed with the examination forms, there may almost be a breach of faith to those who have stayed on voluntarily to work for GCE. If he concentrates on them, then the boys and girls who are our special concern may be left to indifferent teachers of English because their work is not going to be brought to any external measurement. Both courses are unjust. Often one of them has to be chosen. As long as the supply is as inadequate as it is at present, some unfortunate boys and girls will suffer. All that we dare demand of the head of a school is that it should not be the same boys and girls all the time. 545. A precise matching of supply and demand subject by subject would probably be impossible and, even if it could be achieved, would have serious disadvantages. These would be most obvious in the teaching of those subjects to which a relatively short time allocation is given. Religious instruction, history and geography are all subjects to which two periods a week are commonly given. On this basis one specialist teacher could as far as the timetable goes cover all the work. It would however entail teaching some 500 boys and girls each week. This is too heavy a price to pay for expertise, and too unfair on the expert. Some boys and girls, and we would include nearly all those with whom we are especially concerned, are only able to learn anything from a teacher whom they know and who knows them. 546. On the other hand a return to a general practitioner basis in the 'classroom subjects' as a whole seems equally undesirable and indeed impracticable if the kind of work sketched out in the last few chapters is to be attempted. This cannot be done on the basis of general knowledge and being a few lessons ahead of the class. Above all, few teachers are really competent to teach both English and mathematics in a secondary school, especially to the older pupils with whom we are concerned. A reasonable higher education for anybody proposing to teach the boys and girls of this report should in any event make him able to teach more than one subject. It would probably give him a wide degree of competence in one of the broad fields of the humanities, mathematics and science or the 'practical subjects'; and would, we think, quite often fit a teacher who had a major qualification in one of the first two fields to take a share in the third, or a teacher whose major qualification was in one of the 'practical subjects' to take some part in one of the first two fields, provided that he was not asked to teach something for which he has had no professional training. 547. Some interchange of disciplines of this kind would often be an advantage to the pupils with whom we are most concerned. They are perhaps more likely to pay attention to what a teacher tells them about their speech or writing if they have seen him making something in the workshop or in the kitchen. Certainly a teacher who sees his pupils working in a number of quite different situations will have a much truer idea of their individual needs than if he only teaches them one subject. He can then arrange their work so that one subject supports another and so that both are more likely to meet the individual pupil's individual need. An interchange would also have the advantage of giving those teachers, who at present always teach whole classes, the opportunity of working more closely with individuals in the half classes which are normal in many practical subjects. The individual conversation which is impossible with thirty boys and girls in a forty minute period is both practicable and essential with fifteen during a double period of craft work. English teachers, who are also competent craftsmen, could both learn and contribute much in this way. Married women, who have brought up a family, have much that they could contribute to housecraft, given some little additional training, as well as to their own subject whatever it may be. 548. We have concentrated on the problem of finding teachers for the humanities, and for English and religious instruction in particular, because it is here that many people see no problem at all. This does not mean that we ignore the problems of staffing in the other two major fields. They are indeed acute. But the urgent needs in these fields have been generally and officially recognised and action taken so that a head who is familiar with the general pattern of teacher training and the provision of specialist wings to meet the known shortages may reasonably feel that in a few years' time the supply in these fields will be better, though there is no guarantee that the wastage through marriage of women teachers of practical subjects will not offset the improved supply. 549. Few school timetables can today be made with the confidence that the right staff will be there to do the job that ought to be done. It is indeed remarkable how well the schools have 'made do'. But it is important to remember that 'making do' will not do. Our schools will not be what they should until we give them the teachers they need.
Footnotes (1) The present practice in schools in our sample is described in paragraphs 645 and 644. (2) A substantial proportion of pupils, however, are still legally able to leave school before they complete their fourth year. (3) See paragraphs 626-630. (4) The staffing of the schools in our sample is described in chapter 24. 
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