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Primary Education (1959) (page numbers in brackets) Notes on the text
Part 1 Historical
Part 2 The Primary Schools
Part 3 The Fields of Learning
Part 4 The Special Problems of Wales
Index (331-334) |
Primary Education (1959)
Suggestions for the consideration of teachers and others concerned with the work of primary schools London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1959
[page 1] [page 3] A RECOGNISED STAGE IN THE NATIONAL SYSTEM The last Handbook of Suggestions for the consideration of Teachers and others concerned in the work of Public Elementary Schools was published in 1937. Between that date and the reprinting of the volume in 1944, the second world war had disrupted education and called a halt to any material advance; but it had stimulated, rather than quelled, constructive thought. Thus, in June 1944, in an additional Prefatory Note to the reprinted Handbook, it could be stated that an Education Bill was then before Parliament and 'important developments' were at that time in view. The Education Bill became the Education Act of 1944, which not only made the title of the previous Handbook obsolete by abolishing the term 'Public Elementary Schools' but, for the first time in our history, established by statute primary education as a recognised stage in the national system of education. 'The Statutory system of education shall be organised in three progressive stages to be known as Primary education, Secondary education and Further education, and it 'shall be the duty of the local education authority for every area, so far as their powers extend, to contribute towards the spiritual, moral, mental and physical development of the community by securing that efficient education throughout these stages shall be available to meet the needs of the population of their areas.' That the primary stage of education should begin at five years of age was established as long ago as 1870 when the Education Act of that year adopted five as the lower age limit for compulsory attendance at school. The break between primary and secondary education, with the acceptance of eleven to twelve as [page 4] the age at which the break should take place, was established gradually. In 1925 a Board of Education circular pointed out that the age of eleven was increasingly recognised as 'the most suitable dividing line between what may be called "Junior" and "Senior" education' (Circular 1350), and also in the 1920s several local education authorities made explicit proposals for junior departments. But as a piece of organisation on a national scale the break between primary and secondary education at the age of eleven arose only in part from the long-felt concern about the welfare of the younger children in 'all-standard' schools: it came about finally as a by-product of providing better education for older children. In 1926 the Consultative Committee under the chairmanship of Sir WH Hadow produced their Report on the Education of the Adolescent of which one of the main recommendations was that 'at the age of 11+ pupils from primary schools should normally be transferred to a different school, or, failing that, to a different type of education from that given to pupils under the age of 11+'. This had the effect of promoting at once the 'break at eleven' and primary schooling as a separate stage in education. Also, although some reservation was expressed in the report whether the practice of transferring children at 11+ should be universal, this age has in fact become, in all maintained schools, the end of primary education. Thus a child's chronological age, and not his level of achievement, is the determining factor in his movement from primary to secondary education - a custom not without considerable influence on the organisation and arrangements in the primary school. In carrying out the policy of reorganisation there were many obstacles to overcome in providing adequately both for the seniors and for the primary children. Everywhere new school buildings were needed and very extensive alteration of older ones. The operation of the dual system necessitated patient negotiation and some amendments in financial regulations. Thus the physical separation of the primary and secondary stages of education proceeded comparatively slowly at first, though it accelerated in the late 1930s. After the ending of the war and the Education Act of 1944 considerable advances were made despite severe economic handicaps, shortage of teachers and abnormally high numbers of young children; but re-organisation of education into primary and secondary stages is not yet complete. [page 5] More than nine-tenths of children up to eleven years of age are now in primary schools - in separate infant schools, separate junior schools, or schools for all between five and eleven. Children under five may be in nursery classes which are part of infant or infant and junior schools, or in separate nursery schools. This variety is due to local needs and historical circumstances as well as to educational policy. Older school buildings are not always conveniently placed for the needs of the present population, nor are sites for new schools always available where they are most needed. In recent years too, there have been some considerable movements of the population out of older areas to new towns and suburbs. Local conditions and history have had similar effects on the size of schools. Experience suggests that a primary school of about 350 children is probably about the largest size desirable for normal working; but while of some 27,000 maintained primary schools over a quarter have each under a hundred pupils in them, over a thousand have more than four hundred pupils. The smaller schools, with children of five to eleven, are mainly in the rural areas; the size of the largest schools is often due to the need to accommodate a child population increasing with unexpected rapidity. The long history of the infant schools is told in the opening chapters of the Consultative Committee's report of 1933 on Infant and Nursery Schools. It describes more than a hundred years of steady growth and progressive practice, inspired by generations of devoted teachers and informed by research in the educational, psychological, medical and social fields both in this and in other countries. It is fortunate that when primary education was at last established as a separate phase in its own right, it had this cherished tradition of infant education to draw on; for here the nature and needs of children had become central to thinking and were accepted as the basis of educational practice. Separate nursery schools had already been established by voluntary effort before the Education Act of 1918 gave local education authorities the power to aid and supply them. In 1944 nursery education in schools or classes was established as a statutory part of the educational system. Since 1944 the overwhelming numbers of children between five and eleven have [page 6] made it impossible in many places to spare accommodation or teachers for the under-fives; and many nursery classes have had to close in consequence. But fortunately the nursery schools have not declined in number, and educationally there has been plenty of vigorous thinking and many notable advances in practice which promise well for the future. Since their beginning, nursery schools have had an important effect on infant education. By contrast with the infant school, the junior school is less than thirty years old. Emerging in the thirties after the Hadow report, it had often to fit its new life into buildings intended for the old 'all standard' school from which the seniors had departed. Its possible strengths were unknown and untried; it had no traditions of its own. It remained for the Consultative Committee of 1931 to affirm that this particular age range had in fact its special needs and problems, and to offer suggestions how these might be met. It is usually observed with some surprise that this report was published as long ago as 1931. In it was first realised fully the conception of primary education as a distinct entity. 'The General Aim and Scope of the Primary School It is true indeed that the process of education from the age of five to the end of the secondary stage should be envisaged as a coherent whole, that there should be no sharp division between the infant, junior, and post-primary stages, and that the transition from any one stage to the succeeding stage should be as smooth and gradual as possible. The upper stage of primary education, though intimately connected with the infant stage and also with the secondary stage, should nevertheless be regarded as forming a well-marked period in the physical and mental development of the average child, demanding special treatment and special methods of teaching. Both the infant school and the different types of secondary school will, to some extent, affect courses and methods of teaching in the upper section of the primary school but they should not be permitted to determine either. The primary school should not, therefore, be regarded merely as a preparatory department for the subsequent stage, and the courses should be planned and conditioned, not mainly by the supposed requirements of the secondary stage, nor by the exigencies of an examination at the age of eleven, but by the needs of the child at that [page 7] particular phase in his physical and mental development. The primary school should afford time and scope for general development in preparation for the more varied forms of teaching that will be adapted to the special abilities and aptitudes of the pupils at a later age. It should arouse in the pupil a keen interest in the things of the mind and in general culture, fix certain habits, and develop a reasonable degree of self-confidence, together with a social or team-spirit.' (The Primary School 1931). But as the main inquiry and report of the Consultative Committee were concerned with children from seven to eleven it is in the aims of what we now know as junior schools that they were particularly interested: 'The special task of the schools which are concerned with the later years of primary education will be to provide for the educational needs of childhood, just as it is the function of the nursery and infant schools to deal with the needs of infancy and of the post-primary schools to deal with the needs of adolescence ... Our main care must be to supply children between the ages of seven and eleven with what is essential to their healthy growth - physical, intellectual, and moral - during that particular stage of their development. The principle which is here implied will be challenged by no one who has grasped the idea that life is a process of growth in which there are successive stages, each with its own specific needs. It can, however, hardly be denied that there are places in our educational system where the curriculum is distorted and the teaching warped from its proper character by the supposed need of meeting the requirements of a later educational stage. So long as this is the case, it must remain important to emphasise the principle that no good can come from teaching children things that have no immediate value for them, however highly their potential or prospective value may be estimated. To put the point in a more concrete way we must recognise the uselessness and the danger of seeking to inculcate what Professor AN Whitehead calls inert ideas - that is, ideas which at the time when they are imparted have no bearing upon a child's natural activities of body or mind and do nothing to illuminate or guide his experience.' (ibid). The report emphasises that education should 'help children directly to strengthen and enlarge their instinctive hold on the conditions of life by enriching, illuminating, and giving point to their growing experience', and finally it sums up the purpose of the school in these now familiar words: 'The curriculum is to be thought of in terms of activity and experience rather than of knowledge to be acquired and facts to be stored. Its aims should be to develop in a child the fundamental [page 8] interests of civilised life so far as these powers and interests lie within the compass of childhood, to encourage him to attain gradually to that control and orderly management of his energies, impulses and emotions, which is the essence of moral and intellectual discipline, and to help him to discover the idea of duty and to ensue it, and to open out his imagination and his sympathies in such a way that he may be prepared to understand and to follow in later years the highest examples of excellence in life and conduct.' (ibid). In the last fifty years there have been important changes in the general conditions of education, and three of these in particular have been of special benefit to primary education. In the first place, since 1945 all non-graduate teachers (which means nearly all who teach in primary schools) have been required to be trained and qualified, with the exception of a very small proportion of temporary and occasional teachers. Since in the primary school nearly all teachers are class teachers and are responsible for all sides of their children's education, the quality of every teacher is of first importance. Then, although the high birth-rate immediately after the war has made many classes larger than the recognised maximum of 40, especially in thickly populated areas, the size of classes has in fact decreased significantly in the last fifty years. In the early nineteen hundreds a certificated teacher was expected to have 60 children in his class. In 1924, local education authorities were expected to bring classes down to 50, and the Board's Report of 1938 was able to record a further marked decrease in the number of over-large classes, though statistics show that at that time the greatest measure of overcrowding was in the classes for younger children. In 1945, Circular 30, accompanying the Draft Regulation for Primary and Secondary Schools which now replaced the old Code, regretted that it was not yet possible to prescribe a lower maximum than 40 for junior and infant classes and underlined the considerable difficulty involved in achieving classes of 40 until staffing and accommodation could be improved. Thirdly, there has been a remarkable improvement in school buildings, especially since the war. Light and space, access to the open air, convenient and pleasant sanitary arrangements, moveable furniture and more adequate storage space, gardens and interesting decoration are the accepted features of newer schools. [page 9] A good deal has been achieved also in bringing at least some of these amenities to older buildings, though much still remains to be done. Though good education can, and often does go on in old and inconvenient buildings, there can be no doubt as to the benefits to health and educational opportunity which buildings designed to fit the children's educational needs confer on staff and pupils. From 1905 onwards the Board of Education published a series of Handbooks of Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers, each revised or rewritten in the light of comments on the earlier version and of HM Inspectors' experience in the schools. Each book in turn reflects changes in outlook and emphasis, and all, of course, being prior to 1944, are concerned with education in the Public Elementary Schools up to fourteen years of age though, by the time of the last edition in 1937, the policy of separate primary and secondary schools was already adopted, and therefore the nursery and infant, the junior and the senior stages of education were considered in three separate chapters. One passage in the Prefatory Note to the 1937 edition, which is repeated from the Prefatory Note to the earlier 1918 edition, is as important today as when it was written and applies at least as much to this present book as to any that has preceded it: 'Neither the present volume nor any developments or amendments of it are designed to impose any regulations supplementary to those contained in the Code. The only uniformity of practice that the Board of Education desire to see in the teaching of Public Elementary Schools is that each teacher shall think for himself, and work out for himself such methods of teaching as may use his powers to the best advantage and be best suited to the particular needs and conditions of the school. Uniformity in details of practice (except in the mere routine of school management) is not desirable even if it were attainable. But freedom implies a corresponding responsibility in its use.' 'However,' the Handbook goes on, 'the teacher need not let the sense of his responsibility depress him or make him afraid to be his natural self in school. Children are instinctively attracted by sincerity and cheerfulness; and the greatest teachers have been thoroughly human in their weaknesses as well as in their strength.' (Handbook, 1918). [page 10] In some ways this book forms one of a series to which the earlier Handbooks of Suggestions belong. It will, it is hoped, stimulate thought no less than they did. Like its predecessors, it springs from the experience of HM Inspectors gained during visits to schools and in discussions with teachers there and at various courses and conferences. Like its predecessors also, it seeks to strengthen and not to diminish the individual teacher's sense of responsibility. But, unlike the earlier books, it is concerned exclusively with primary education, and it is not called a Handbook. It seems more appropriate in the circumstances of today to describe the arrangements and practices which are to be found in the more successful schools, and to discuss these in the light of current knowledge and experience of children's capacities and reactions. To many teachers much that is described may be familiar; some of them at least may be led by it to reconsider their own practices and their children's achievements; all are asked to regard the book as something other than a compendium of advice about what should or should not be done. Educational growth in this country has been uneven and its pace has varied, yet there has always been some sense of continuity; ideas have settled so slowly and changes have emerged so quietly that growth has seemed imperceptible until, after years of steady maturing, there has come a degree of fulfilment sometimes surprising even to those most directly responsible for it. What is now to be found in the schools has gradually evolved out of the free working and independent initiative of teachers who have refused to discard the solid, proved and unassailable part of tradition in favour of what is apparently easy, bright and new, and have preferred to base their practices on the foundation of experience patiently accumulated. One salient feature of primary education today is the ever deepening concern with children as children which has gradually spread from the nursery and infant schools to the junior schools. This concern shows itself especially in the awareness of the child as a whole with interdependent spiritual, emotional, intellectual and physical needs, and in the appreciation of the wide range of [page 11] aptitudes, abilities and temperaments which any class of children presents. Another feature, of no less significance, is the increasing attention given by teachers to the worth of what is taught and to the quality of the children's learning. Equally important is the growing realisation that the capacities of all children, dull and bright alike, must be exercised to the full, and that to achieve this end the work must be made interesting and a sense of standard must pervade it all. 
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