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.

Appendix II Sex education
[pages 268 - 271]

(An account of how one school tackles the task, written by the Headmaster)

1. My report on sex teaching is based on seventeen years' experience in a mixed school. Its central theme is that the vast majority of boys and girls, as they grow up and before they reach the leaving age, have a normal curiosity about sex. Once they know they are at liberty to speak freely to their teachers, they will discuss general and personal problems with a wholesome frankness new in this generation. The testing time comes when they leave school and go to work. Promiscuity then there may well be but our evidence is of intense loyalty and generosity in boy and girl friendships while they are still at school.

2. We have problems with some of our boys and girls but we would woefully misrepresent what goes wrong if we spoke of them in sensational terms. Current standards of morality in the adult world have not affected their behaviour at school so completely as to make our interpretation of goodness out of date. They have more than an inkling that, as they grow older, they will have problems to face and decisions to make which are of vital concern to them. We prepare them to meet these by initial protection, by personal help rather than through arid schemes of work which avoid the main issues, by religious teaching humanly interpreted and by moral guidance firmly but sympathetically offered.

3. Given the friendly interest of the staff, how does the school plan its aid for pupils going through adolescent development? The biological approach is the obvious one. Our younger children, especially the girls, quickly come to terms with the facts of the reproductive processes. Some visual aid material is available but there is not enough to enthuse about. Careful selection of the best slides is made. Whenever we have had a lively pets club or some school livestock the beginnings of sex discussion in mixed groups have been completely uninhibited. From there we find no difficulty in taking the next step to the human situation.

4. In health education and housecraft the mistress comes close to the needs of the senior girls. Her emphasis is held steady on sex as a healthy and natural interest. She notes and approves it openly, allaying fears concerning the onset and development of menstruation, discussing marriage and the birth and care of children and planning the homes they hope to have in the future. From these subjects arise many group and personal outpourings that need the wise teacher and sympathetic listener. A married woman with children of her own is invaluable here.

5. The girls' interest in their dress and appearance forms an essential part of sex teaching. Girls are helped to make the most of themselves. They are advised about overemphasising their physical characteristics. Why shouldn't they? The answer is given directly and with no attempt to avoid issues. It is related immediately at this stage to the difference between healthy attractiveness for boys and the flaunting of sexual differences to enflame.

6. To our deputy head go the girls with the more intense personal problems. Gossip, misunderstanding, first encounters with sexual incidents are explained and a line of conduct indicated. She advocates many and diverse interests to keep the body active and the mind alert so that sex takes no inordinate place.

7. My school's teaching on sex is positive rather than negative. We put the value of moral behaviour before the possible unpleasant consequences of sexual experiment. We aim to make 'love', 'honour' and 'respect' words of significance in our school life, and as familiar as 'practical' and 'vocational' are in other departments of our work. In terms of human happiness they will almost certainly mean more.

8. In religious knowledge lessons and in talks with their form teachers the children are invited at the senior stage to ask their questions. Nearly all are completely and sincerely serious. They want to know. The teacher may be discussing the marriage service. 'With my body I thee worship'. His teaching is clear and precise. Our pupils know that many people in our district and in the wider world do not live by these standards. The teacher holds to his belief that, when we fall from grace, forgiveness and a new start are always possible to all who honestly admit their wrong and seek ways of putting it right. He does not take a holier-than-thou position, but represents himself as being fallible as they are. He shares their need to love and respect their neighbour.

9. My housecraft teacher finds that work done in biology and religious education lessons provides a natural introduction to her talks with the senior girls. This is not fortuitous. There is continuous reference being made privately and in our regular staff meetings to problem cases and to the progress of our teaching. My teachers are experienced in assessing when talks about sex and marriage to the fourth year pupils are opportune. They follow no hard and fast scheme of work. The idea runs counter to their feelings about the subject.

10. The work of one fourth year form teacher illustrates this. He has treated these subjects very fully this year. They are based on current topics or on those arising our of religious teaching on marriage.

1. Teenage courtship
2. Pre-marital sexual experience
3. Unmarried Mothers, based on an excellent series in a Sunday newspaper
4. Newspapers and sex
5. Divorce, arising out of Leo Abse's Bill
6. Vice and the current scandal [the Profumo affair]
7. Abortion and the problem of Thalidomide babies
8. Venereal disease, illustrated in a recent ITV Programme, and watched by some of the form.

This is a formidable and daunting list. Our method ensures that no subject will be treated cold on a particular day.

11. There is a danger in all of our group or form discussions. We want to give no superficial introduction. We prefer the personal approach by pupil to teacher. These quotations underline the problem:

(a) 'I find the difficulties lie in the wide difference in maturity in any age group. If only one could segregate the absolute innocents from the obviously well-informed'. Housecraft teacher.

(b) 'Sex. I have not finished my course as a teenager. And this subject as not really hit me in the eye yet. But it is the subject I shall have to think about'. Boy - 15 years.

(c) 'The question of sex is always cropping up in front of teenagers, and it is wrong. Was sex thrown at our fathers when they were our age? No. Then why throw it at us. You get fed up of the word, and I think the more you discuss it over a certain level the more harm it does. When somebody tells you that you get a tremendous thrill out of intercourse you are likely to try it at the first chance you get'. Boy - 15 years.

13. BBC television programmes such as Going to Work have afforded an excellent introduction to mixed viewing and discussion. Taped recordings of a series of lessons called The Other Sex from The Bible and Life Sound Broadcasts for Schools have enabled the whole of the fourth year to follow significant material in small groups. The result has generally been that after collective discussion children have stayed behind to ask questions privately. This is the outcome of our work that gives the greatest satisfaction.

14. Few men staff feel comfortable about giving boys sex instruction. The girl stands to suffer more. The unmarried mother who elects to keep her child has a tremendous struggle ahead. So we speak more often to the girls. But we are wrong if we shirk a vital issue. Boys need help no less. Their body changes offer private means of satisfying newly experienced desire. They feel guilty or unclean. They are reassured medically and morally. Their experiments, their sense of the girls' challenge to their growing manhood, are met by honest, forthright explanation from those older members of staff who feel they can approach the subject without embarrassment.

15. The duty of the older boy to honour the girl he loves is readily appreciated and supported. Our boys and girls are often far more censorious about sexual morality than adults. The plight of the girl deserted by her false lover provides no amusement to the toughest group of boys. They, too, have sisters and know what these desertions mean. They can well understand 'love with honour'. The phrase may help them in the future. The point is further made by a member of staff:

'I do not pride myself into thinking that what I say will necessarily have any effect upon their future behaviour, but at least the facts have been presented to them together with what I hope are reasonable arguments, and when they reach the stage of being involved in personal relationships they are able to face them having some knowledge. This knowledge could result in experiment, as some people argue, but at the same time ignorance of these matters more often can result in painful consequences'.

17. Accordingly, books and illustrated papers dealing with sex, whilst existing in up to date form in the classroom for the use of teachers, are not lent indiscriminately to boys and girls unless their parents indicate that we should continue giving advice beyond the place where they feel competent to pursue the subject. Parent-teacher meetings and personal interviews with parents occur and are felt to be the wisest in the face of difficulties. Doctors and nurses can be called upon for help in a joint undertaking between school and home but the moral charge remains with the parents.

18. In a world swinging between the sentimentality and slush of many of the pop songs, the visual debauchery of our lurid paperbacks and the uncovering of vice rings in our daily newspapers we are at a disadvantage. Our young people are growing up, starry-eyed or cynical, needing what is best and meriting it. We ought to have as support their parents' example and our own, but we must admit that both can be very insecure and shaky. It is a challenge all schools must meet. Here we are trying to face it without preaching, without heavy moralising, but with sympathetic understanding. We care intensely for these boys and girls.