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 24 The men and women who teach them
[pages 245 - 249]

646. 'Are you going to stay with us, Sir?' was the question which greeted the hero of a recent novel about a modern school as he got to know the boys in his form. They had had a long experience of transient teachers and had not enjoyed it. Were they particularly unfortunate, or is this what must be expected? The schools in our sample were asked to report their staff changes since September 1958, so that we might know how many comings and goings of teachers the Browns, Jones and Robinsons of our report had known in their secondary modern schools.

647. There must, of course, always be changes in school staffs. Experienced teachers reach retiring age, promising men and women get promotion and young men and women are appointed to fill their places. This is a natural and a healthy process. In addition the years covered by our enquiry have been years of increasing numbers of pupils in secondary schools and extra teachers have been appointed to meet the bulge. There were 14 per cent more men and 11 per cent more women teachers in the schools in our sample in 1961 than in 1958.

648. There is no precise way of deciding from the information in our possession what a normal and healthy turnover would be, but it is necessary to have some kind of yardstick by which to judge the present position. Probably few heads of schools would wish to appoint a man or woman to the staff who would not stay at least three years with them. Heads of training colleges and university departments of education would probably advise their students to stay three years in their first post. Allowance must be made for young teachers who run into difficulties in their first school and are well advised to move to another school where they can avoid the mistakes they have made. Older men and women may find promotion unexpectedly come their way within three years of joining a school staff. It seems reasonable to suppose that somewhere between 10 per cent and 15 per cent of new appointments may rightly move on within three years for one or other of these reasons. The period under review in our survey was one of three years. We know for each school how many men and women were appointed to the staff after September 1958, up to and including September 1961. If the argument of this paragraph is sound, we should hope that the schools would still have on their staffs somewhere between 85 and 90 per cent of those appointed during this period. A school with a holding power of this order is in a healthy condition.

649. An index of 'holding power' was calculated for all schools. Holding power was defined as the proportion of teachers appointed to the staff after September 1958, who were still in post in September 1961. On this basis the overall holding power of schools where men teachers are concerned was 65 per cent and for women teachers 58 per cent. Even if our estimate of a healthy situation in the last paragraph proves somewhat too exacting, the contrast between it and these figures indicates an unhealthy state of affairs in modern schools generally. 650. To some extent this is clearly a national problem - one consequence of the general shortage and wastage of teachers and the greater opportunity of promotion to graded posts since 1956. The difference between the holding power index for men and women teachers is no doubt associated with the early wastage of married women teachers. In the conditions which prevailed in the 1930s, both generally and among teachers, the holding power of the schools was almost certainly greater.

651. But excessive turnover is not only a national problem. The differences in holding power between schools are more than can be explained by sampling fluctuations. Some variation is in any event to be expected just as it is when twenty coins are each tossed ten times. But undue variation - and what is undue in this context can be evaluated mathematically - would be evidence of something odd in the coins themselves. So here the variation is more than would arise accidentally, and is evidence of real differences in holding power not only between categories of schools, but between schools in the same category.

652. The distinction between various kinds of neighbourhood has often been useful in interpreting the data from our survey. The school staffing situation is no exception. Thus, while the average holding power index for men in modern schools is 65 per cent, in socially mixed neighbourhoods it is 70 per cent and in rural schools 76 per cent. In the special group of slum schools it is only 34 per cent. The full picture by neighbourhoods is given below.

Table 23 Index of staff holding power by neighbourhoods

653. These differences are not unexpected and they are certainly important, but perhaps even more important is the fact that these groups are far from homogeneous. The differences between schools in the same type of neighbourhood are often greater than can be explained by chance in the sense in which we have used it. Only the group of rural schools is free from these significant variations and its record, at least for men teachers, approximates to that which we set up as a model in paragraph 648. It is reasonable from our data to infer that the quality of the school as a community can on occasion increase or lower its holding power, proving stronger than the effects of the neighbourhood in which its work is done. Some schools at least can help themselves.

654. The distribution of the schools in the sample between the three regional zones shows only small differences between them in holding power, though of course great differences within each zone. The position is shown in the following table.

Table 24 Index of staff holding power by regions

When allowance is made for the fact that a high proportion of the rural schools in the sample are in the middle zone differences between zones cease to be statistically significant.

655. Another illustration both of the importance of group factors and also of the even greater importance of individual factors is given by an analysis of holding power in relation to the quality of the school premises. A comparison was made between the staffing position in those schools which are really well-found both in buildings and playing fields with those which are very seriously deficient on both counts. One would expect the former to attract and retain staff and the latter to lose teachers at a more than average rate. And so they both do. The holding power of the well-found schools as a group is 74 per cent for men compared with the overall figure of 65 per cent. For the really poor schools the index is 61 per cent. Clearly having good buildings is an important advantage in keeping a stable staff, especially while most schools are indifferently housed. The disadvantage of a bad building is rather less but may be expected to be aggravated as schools of this kind dwindle in number. But these advantages and disadvantages are not finally decisive. There is sufficient variation between the individual schools in each group to make it clear that a school in a bad building can get and keep a stable staff, and that the best architects cannot guarantee one.

656. Up to this point we have been concerned with a school's holding power over new appointments to the staff. To complete the picture it is necessary to consider also the numbers of staff who have been in post since before September 1958. The overall staffing position of the schools in the sample in September 1961 was made up in the way Table 25 indicates.

Table 25 Staffing of modern schools in the sample in September 1961

Those in the first column of each panel had been in the school at least as long as the boys and girls who took part in our survey - some of them, of course, very much longer. Over the country as a whole there is, then, a reasonable core of at any rate short term stability. The second column of each panel, however, presents altogether too flattering an impression.

657. The true picture is perhaps best given in the form of the flow diagrams below. The first shows roughly what might be expected in a hypothetical school with twenty men on the staff. In three years the head would have had dealings with thirty-five instead of twenty masters. The second diagram brings out how much heavier the turnover is where women teachers are concerned. In a hypothetical school with twenty women assistant mistresses the head would have had dealings with forty-one, more than twice the original complement, during the three year period.

Diagram 14 Teachers in a hypothetical secondary modern school 1958-1961

658. The two diagrams illustrate the kind of experience which the boys or girls in our sample might expect to meet in single sex schools. But most of them in fact are pupils in coeducational schools, and there at least the girls would probably escape the worst disturbances caused by turnover in girls' schools. The following analysis of the staffing of all modern schools in the sample was made to illustrate the part played by women teachers in general and by married women in particular in 1961.

Table 26 Number of single and married women assistants on the staff of modern schools