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Norwood (1943) Notes on the text
Part I Secondary education
Part II Examinations
Part III Curriculum
Conclusions and recommendations
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The Norwood Report (1943)
Curriculum and examinations in secondary schools Report of the Committee of the Secondary School Examinations Council appointed by the President of the Board of Education in 1941 London: HM Stationery Office 1943
Preliminary pages PREFARATORY NOTE
The issue in 1938 of the Consultative Committee's Report on Secondary Education directed considerable attention to the curriculum and examination system as they have developed in secondary schools during the past 40 years. Since the issue of that Report a close study has been made of the administrative problems of post-war education and it was accordingly thought desirable that the curriculum and examinations in secondary schools of the future should be re-examined as part of the wider problems of recasting the educational system. This task was entrusted in 1941 to a Committee of the Secondary Schools Examinations Council under the chairmanship of Sir Cyril Norwood and their Report has now been presented. It will be understood that in publishing this Report, the Board must not be regarded as committed to acceptance of its conclusions and recommendations. But it is evident that the findings of the Committee and the material on which they are based will be of interest to a wide public, and that the Report as a whole will provide a valuable contribution from an independent source to the solution of the educational problems now engaging public attention. The Board accordingly commend the Report to the consideration of all concerned with the future of education in this country and, in doing so, they desire to acknowledge their indebtedness to the Committee and their Chairman. MG Holmes
[title page]  Nowhere must we hold education in dishonour, for with the noblest of men it ranks foremost among blessings. If ever it leaves its proper path and can be restored to it again, to this end everyone should always labour throughout life with all his powers.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Constitution of the Committee
PART I: SECONDARY EDUCATION Chapter 1 The nature of secondary education
Chapter 2 Secondary education as it is
Chapter 3 Secondary education as it might be
PART II: EXAMINATIONS Chapter 4 Existing examinations
Chapter 5 The reorganisation of examinations
Chapter 6 The reorganisation of examinations (continued)
Chapter 7 The Inspectorate PART III: CURRICULUM Chapter 8 The curriculum in general
Chapter 9 Physical education
Summary of main recommendations
Note The estimated gross cost of the preparation of the appended Report (including the expenses of the witnesses and members of the Committee) is £1,735 17s 7d of which £280 represents the estimated cost of printing and publishing this Report.
CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMITTEE
Sir Cyril Norwood (Chairman), President of St John's College, Oxford; Chairman of the Secondary
School Examinations Council.
Assessors appointed by the Board of Education:
APPOINTMENT AND TERMS OF REFERENCE The Committee was appointed by the President of the Board of Education (The Right Hon RA Butler, MP) in October 1941 with the following terms of reference: 'To consider suggested changes in the secondary school curriculum and the question of school examinations in relation thereto.'
PREFACE
To the Right Hon RA Butler MP, President of the Board of Education. Sir, We have the honour to present to you our report on the Curriculum and Examinations in secondary schools. The Committee was appointed in October 1941 and has met 25 times. Evidence has been taken from a large number of individuals, associations, societies and committees representing a great variety of interests; a list is given in an appendix to this report. We should like here to express our thanks and our appreciation of the trouble taken both by individuals and others to aid our deliberations. We wish also to give our special thanks to Mr RH Barrow, our Secretary, who has been responsible for the ordering and collation of all this evidence. We owe him a particular debt for the exercise of his gift of summing up the results of long and detailed discussions in clear and logical statements, and for thus enabling us to report much sooner than at one time seemed possible. The terms of reference which you put before us were as follows: 'To consider suggested changes in the secondary school curriculum and the question of school examinations in relation thereto.' To the task set before us we have addressed ourselves with full consciousness of the importance of the problem for the future of secondary education in this country. Twenty months after our first meeting we present to you our report. We have divided the report as follows: In the Introduction we consider briefly the terms of reference and find them to carry very wide implications; accordingly we set out the reasons why we have thought it desirable to take our enquiry further afield than at first sight appears to be necessary. Finding ourselves then committed to deal with secondary education in its broadest sense, we state briefly the standpoint which we take up as regards the general purpose of education, believing that no discussion on education can be profitable without consideration of its true foundations and proper aims. In the first chapter of Part I we consider the secondary education of the past and its variety; we pay special attention to the existing secondary school, its importance and tradition and the special aims which it set before itself. In the second chapter we review suggested changes in the curriculum and their reasons, which we find to be due chiefly to the growth of 'a child-centred conception of education'. The survey so made leads us to believe that reorganisation of the whole field is necessary. Accordingly in the third chapter we sketch in brief outline the main features of a new secondary education which will cover the whole child population of the country and carry them on to part-time education. We indicate also the main channels leading to the universities and higher education of all kinds; and we make the assumption that the educational and social advantages which will result from giving six months to some form of public service between school and university or other branches of education will so commend themselves that this course will be generally approved. In the remainder of the report we deal only with the grammar school type of secondary education. Part II is devoted to recommendations for the complete reorganisation of the examinations of the existing secondary schools, a reorganisation which increases freedom in the school and which points the way to the development of the teaching profession by increase of its responsibility. Part III is concerned solely with curriculum; in a general chapter we set out suggestions for the freer treatment of the curriculum which is demanded by a 'child-centred education' and made possible by the greater freedom secured by our reorganisation of examinations. The subjects of the curriculum under traditional names are then briefly considered from the same point of view. Appendix A relates to the Central Welsh Board. Appendix B gives a list of witnesses consulted.
INTRODUCTION
At first sight the reference put before us may appear to be simple and direct; brief reflection shows that it may be expanded at once into a series of questions, themselves containing the seeds of more. 'How far can the objective which secondary schools set before themselves be expressed in terms of a curriculum? Should the achievement of pupils and schools be tested in any way by examination, and, if so, for what purpose and by what method?' and finally, 'What is the relation between curriculum and examination? Does curriculum determine examination or examination dictate curriculum?' But behind these questions lies the most fundamental question of all. 'What is the purpose of secondary education?' If your Committee had been content to take the actual scene of secondary education at some selected moment, as for example immediately before the war, and, erecting it as a fixed and motionless background, had proceeded to consider in relation to it suggested changes in curriculum and examination, its deliberations would have been obsolete before they were concluded. For our experience as administrators, organisers and teachers has made us fully conscious that secondary education is in continual development; that it has a history, that because of its history it presents infinite variety, that it has expanded rapidly of recent years and has caught up new interests and new ideals and responsibilities, so that the very phrase 'secondary education' carries with it new implications which it certainly did not carry a few years ago. Indeed the very words of our reference 'suggested changes' imply that educational thought is not at a standstill and presuppose its movement. But that movement is general and is by no means confined to curriculum and examinations; and it has been impossible for us to regard 'change' in curriculum and examinations without reference to change in other spheres of educational activity. It was necessary for us therefore to take into consideration the general trend of educational thought in other directions than those of curriculum and examinations if our suggestions were to be relevant to a changing scene. In short, we were impelled to attempt to picture to ourselves, without going into details, the main features of secondary education as, judged by its past history and present tendencies, it might perhaps develop in the future; and in the sketching of that picture we have drawn upon our own experience of the problems of secondary education as individuals daily engaged with them, and upon the experience of a large number of individuals and associations who have placed their views before us. But our reason for drawing the picture of secondary education which we have attempted to draw must not be misinterpreted. To attempt to present as final any of the developments which we outline in the third chapter of Part I (Secondary education as it might be) is far from our purpose; all that we have done is to set forth in outline the conception of secondary education as a unified whole which was present to our minds when making the recommendations of subsequent chapters. The recommendations contained in Parts II and III do not stand or fall as a whole upon acceptance or rejection of Part I. Still another word of explanation is necessary. As we have indicated above, the terms of our reference immediately suggest as a first question: 'If the curriculum necessarily contributes to the achieving of the purpose of secondary education, what is that purpose?' It is no part of our intention to discuss the answer to that question at length here; but we must indicate the kind of answer which we proposed to ourselves and which was present to our minds throughout our consultations. We regarded it as the purpose of education to help each individual to realise the full powers of his personality - body, mind and spirit - in and through active membership of a society. To this purpose the curriculum makes its own, but by no means the only, contribution; it must make provision in its own province for satisfying the intellectual, aesthetic, spiritual and physical wants of the pupils and must look forward to their needs as citizens and as workers with hand and brain in a society of fellow citizens and fellow workers. But personality is of great variety, differing both in kind and degree, so that the curriculum must be varied and flexible if it is to offer the nurture of most benefit to each individual. This description of the purpose of education did not wholly satisfy us. Human personality contains many possibilities; some are worthy to be developed, some are not; the task of education is to develop those which are worthy and good and to control those which are unworthy and base. We believe that education cannot stop short of recognising the ideals of truth and beauty and goodness as final and binding for all times and in all places, as ultimate values; we do not believe that these ideals are of temporary convenience only, as devices for holding together society till they can be dispensed with as knowledge grows and organisation becomes more scientific. Further, we hold that the recognition of such values implies, for most people at least, a religious interpretation of life which for us must mean the Christian interpretation of life. We have no sympathy, therefore, with a theory of education which presupposes that its aim can be dictated by the provisional findings of special sciences, whether biological, psychological or sociological, that the function of education is to fit pupils to determine their outlook and conduct according to the changing needs and the changing standards of the day. We agree wholeheartedly that scientific method and scientific planning can do much to help in the realisation of the 'good life', and education which does not avail itself of such aid denies itself one means to the realisation of its ends. But our belief is that education from its own nature must be ultimately concerned with values which are independent of time or particular environment, though realisable under changing forms in both, and therefore that no programmes of education which concern themselves only with relative ends and the immediate adaptation of the individual to existing surroundings can be acceptable. Nor are we in sympathy with a tendency which we detect here and there, a tendency to assume that because a thing existed before the war it must be changed after the war without due reflection whether it was good or bad or contained some good in it. We do not believe in change for the sake of change or in total destruction of something which, though in need of reform, yet contains elements of value. For we are conscious that the tradition of secondary education is a fine tradition, that men and women of fine and unselfish character have built up ideals and institutions of untold value to individuals and to the nation, and that the present generation has been tried in the furnace and not found wanting: that education is necessarily slow in growth if it is to grow aright, that it would be an unforgivable wrong to those who come after not to conserve what is good from the labours of the past. We have looked backward, therefore, that we might not neglect what is good. We have looked forward that we might suggest how that good can be reinterpreted and extended more widely to meet a new conception of secondary education. 
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