Primary Education (1959)

(page numbers in brackets)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages (i-xiii)
Foreword, Preface, Contents

Part 1 Historical
Chapter I (1-11)
Recent History of Primary Education

Part 2 The Primary Schools
Chapter II (15-26)
Introduction
Chapter III (27-36)
Nursery Schools and Classes
Chapter IV (37-55)
Infant schools
Chapter V (56-77)
Junior Schools
Chapter VI (78-105)
The Working of the School
Chapter VII (106-110)
Special Educational Treatment

Part 3 The Fields of Learning
Chapter VIII (113-116)
The Curriculum
Chapter IX (117-129)
Religion
Chapter X (130-134)
Physical Education
Chapter XI (135-178)
Language
Chapter XII (179-212)
Mathematics
Chapter XIII (213-246)
Art and Craft and Needlework
Chapter XIV (247-259)
Handwriting
Chapter XV (260-274)
Music
Chapter XVI (275-288)
History
Chapter XVII (289-313)
Geography and Natural History

Part 4 The Special Problems of Wales
Chapter XVIII (317-329)
Wales

Index (331-334)

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1959
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

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The junior school, when it first appeared between the wars, sometimes as the rather forlorn relic of the process alarmingly called 'decapitation', attracted little notice. Even the Primary School Report [Hadow 1931], which has since had a deep influence, failed at the time of its publication in 1931 to draw many people's attention from more absorbing interests to this new phenomenon in education. The junior school had to establish its identity and create its tradition at a time when prevailing thought had little interest in it, and it has in large measure succeeded. Its importance is generally recognised.

Physically, the junior school stage is one of the periods of steady growth. The children gain greater control of their finer muscles, and their manual and bodily dexterity of all kinds improves rapidly, especially in the earlier half of their junior school life. Illness keeps them from school far less than in the infant school and, if they get adequate rest, food and warmth, and are reasonably happy at home and school, they enjoy a vigorous life, are capable of effort sustained for increasingly long periods, and have a keen delight in the achievements to which their efforts lead.

But a junior school child is often active even without moving about. A great deal of his mental activity goes on through language - in thinking, speaking, writing and reading. He can use language to plan ahead and to re-live a past experience, often described in a long narrative. He is able to write and record what he would say, and through reading lives imaginatively in the exploits of other people at other times and places. His questions

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are more pertinent than before, and his knowledge becomes more definite. His world therefore enlarges at a great rate and, with encouragement and opportunity, he enters upon his exploration of it, physically, intellectually and imaginatively, with confidence and zest.

In a junior child a desire to be like his elders and to enjoy, however vicariously, their experiences, directs his interests and his actions. He wants to be accepted by grown-ups, especially by those whom he likes, and he wants to share in the contemporary scene, to hear of passing events and adult adventures in the world at large. It is not surprising that some children show resentment against the remoteness of what happens in school from the happenings in the world outside; their imaginations need 'real' things to feed upon, concrete knowledge and definite facts, especially about things which the grown-up world seems to them to think important. They want to do grown-up things and begin to imitate the adult techniques in many skills.

Yet though girls and boys want to be like adults, they can be like them only within limits. They do not yet look far ahead; it is the present or easily foreseeable future that is all-important to them. Unlike adults, they rarely pause long to contemplate, but, anticipating success, they rush straight to their aim.

Despite their matter-of-factness and concern with the immediate and contemporary world, children of this age are strongly imaginative and construct many things, often with great ingenuity and originality.

As the Report on the Primary School [Hadow 1931] points out, it was supposed for a long time that the salient characteristic of children up to eleven was their excellent mechanical memory; but closer inquiry has shown that a child's memory stands out in high relief at this period only because his higher intellectual capacities are comparatively undeveloped or unused. The memory of a child of nine or ten years is inferior to that of the older child, especially as regards long distance or delayed memory, and his performance in tests of short distance memory depends, of course, largely on his power of attention. Though teachers may legitimately take full advantage of the fact that children between seven and nine show some fondness for mechanical repetition, children from nine onwards show growing powers of intelligent understanding and of relating and organising their observations and knowledge, and it is this kind of

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remembering which should be called as fully as possible into play. Remembering always plays an important part in learning; it is likely to be most reliable about those things which arouse interest and command full attention and which are gradually caught up in the growing body of related experience and thought.*

Among other characteristics, which will be mentioned later and which develop at various intervals during the junior stage, are making collections, forming 'gangs' with other children, and asserting, often impatiently, their independence.

(a) The move from the infant school

When a child goes from the infant to the junior section in a school for children from five to eleven years, the change need be no more disturbing than the move from one class to another; but a child who goes from an infant to a junior school may suffer an acute jolt. The new building may be quite unlike the old and at first may seem to be a long way off, and in a strange setting. Moreover, when he goes, he exchanges his place of privilege at the top of the infant school for an obscure one at the bottom of the junior school. He knows only the children who go up with him; all the rest are strange, like his teacher and the new Head. It is not surprising that in this transfer some children suffer setbacks in their progress and show signs of stress in their behaviour. The criticisms made by some junior schools about the standards reached by the children who come to them might be less stringent if it were always realised that not only have the children just returned from a long summer holiday but that also some junior schools themselves do much less than they might to ensure that the passage for the children at this point is as smooth and as little wasteful as possible.

On the other hand, the children themselves are prepared for the change and are often eagerly looking forward to it. The prospect of a different school with a new routine and different teachers is exciting and challenging. These changes are sufficient to fulfil expectations and absorb all a child's powers of adjust-

*v. The Primary School, p. 39.

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ment. If to these are added a sudden change in the ways in which he is expected to learn and in the standards of work and behaviour which evoke praise or blame, the demands on his powers of adaptation may become too much for him, so that where he was eager he is now disheartened.

The teacher who receives him can prevent this. She* not only studies carefully any records or other information which the infant school sends her, but she should, if at all possible, have visited the school, made herself known to the children, watched them at work, and noted carefully what they were achieving and by what means they were learning.

In the infant school, children will most probably have been used to working most of the day, if not individually, then in small groups, with much allowance for their differing capacities and rates of progress. They will probably have been somewhat slow to settle down at the beginning of a period and rather slow to pack up at the end; they will have talked a great deal, and will have begun to converse with one another with pleasure and profit; they will have found it uncomfortable to sit still for long and will have been used to moving about. It seems likely, therefore, that they will adapt themselves most easily to the change of school if they continue working for the most part individually or in groups, talking and moving about as needed, though there will, of course, be occasions when the class forms a single group, for such purposes as stories or lessons of various kinds, for music or for movement.

(b) Cooperation, competition and sense of standard

The change from being the big boys and girls in one school to being the little ones in another comes at a time when children have in fact already shown that they are capable of being self-reliant and responsible. From the beginning, therefore, the children should be given the chance to exercise resourcefulness and to undertake responsible duties. At this time also children recognise more clearly that each is one of a group; they are beginning to give more weight to the opinion of their fellows and to appeal less

*About 25 per cent of the teachers in primary schools are men and 75 per cent women; women teach infants and usually the younger juniors, as well as some of the older ones. When the feminine pronoun is used here or the masculine pronoun later, what is said applies equally to the other sex.

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to the authority of the teacher against them. This does not mean that they are now ready for teamwork, but it does mean that they can usefully cooperate for some specific venture in a group formed for the purpose, and in so doing learn to understand one another better.

With this growing awareness of their fellows they may well display an obvious self-assertiveness, but it would be unwise to assume that here is the dawn of the competitive spirit. Girls and boys of this age like to do well in any contest. They boast of their exploits and achievements, and dare one another to do things. But each is much more interested in his own success than in the fact that others are less successful; for them to enjoy winning it is not necessary that others should lose. They are still very sensitive to the opinion of adults, and the praise and blame of a teacher they like is very powerful. At a time when they are just beginning to cooperate and have still so much to learn in this way, competitions in which praise or blame is meted out according to superiority over others are inappropriate. To overemphasise competition is to run the risk both of disheartening the unsuccessful and of making the winners unpleasantly cocksure or anxious about maintaining their position. Children get great pleasure from beating their own previous achievements and the teacher's task is to establish the climate of opinion and expectation in which everybody does his best. This happens when the teacher is well aware of what each child can do, and when the children know that he knows and that he is unwilling to accept something less well done than they can do it, although the best of each one may be of a very different standard from that of his neighbour. In short, the teacher, though he cannot expect uniform achievements has, from the beginning of the junior school, to establish an active sense of standards.

(c) Nature and planning of the work

As in the infant school, each day should begin with the corporate act of worship. After that, the arrangements in different schools, and often for each class in a school, vary. Not only do diverse conditions in the schools make flexibility necessary, but teachers find from their own experience the kind of practice that is likely to produce the results they desire.

The headings under which the various junior school activities are described in the timetable vary. In nearly all schools definite

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times are assigned to the different subjects, though the extent to which these times are split into shorter periods may be very different in different schools. There is a strong tendency to assign fairly long periods under general titles, leaving the teacher free to use the time to the best advantage. Thus it is common now to find English in the timetable without the divisions of reading, composition, speech-training, writing, English exercises etc, which used to be universal.

What is certain at this stage is that all the different parts of education are closely interwoven, and school subjects, however described or assigned, are in practice only vaguely differentiated. Language - spoken, heard, written and read - is part of everything; art and constructive skill, and awareness of size and shape, and the necessity of measurement and calculation are part of most things. Exploration of his environment will take a child into the fields of history, geography, nature study and elementary science. Music and speech often go with movement, and physical education includes mime or dance.

This does not mean, however, that all is haphazard and without plan, any more than it was in the infant school. Each aspect of education must have its proper share of time and attention and each day in school strenuous activity alternates with quieter pursuits, and individual concentration with corporate endeavour. There must be time for the practice essential to learning, and time for going back to revise and consolidate. In each field of study there should be a general sense of direction and objective, to give the necessary framework within which there will still be every chance to take advantage of unforeseen opportunities. The whole should be kept steady by the teacher's records of what is done generally and by records, private as well as official, of what each child is accomplishing.

The traditional arts of the teacher remain as important as ever - the art of vivid narration and of clear description and explanation. The teacher's reading aloud of prose and poetry is indispensable, while discussion of their work with the children in class, and with groups or individuals, is fundamental to progress.

Lessons may sometimes be quite short, and sometimes it is wiser to teach only part, perhaps a small part, of the class at a time, while the others do something else. At a time when the children are ready for it, a good lesson should be a source of information, should carry the children forward in the mastery of

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processes or skills, or should be the inspiration and starting point for further investigation. When it takes the form of discussion, a lesson is often a valuable summing-up of enquiries the children have themselves made, and without it much of the value of what they have done may be lost. In this, as in other things, a flexible and sensitive response to what is needed at the time is the mark of live teaching; rigid adherence to set methods usually defeats its own ends.

Visits by the children in groups or as a class to meet people and see things of interest are recognised opportunities for first-hand learning. In some areas such visits are difficult to arrange, but it is usually practicable to allow children at times to go outside the classroom. What matters is not that the children should travel far, but that, near or far, they should be able to search, to observe and study closely, and to talk about their experience. Children explore what lies before them, but they do not choose what lies before them; that choice is the teacher's, and he has to choose those things and opportunities which he thinks of greatest value and most likely to lead to fruitful enquiry. Although he cannot foresee just what the children will get from any pursuit on which they set out, his experience should give him an idea of the kind of thing that is likely to happen. Moreover, he has to be alert and resourceful enough to help the children forward when they seem to have come to a barrier, or to accept an early end to some enterprise if it turns out to be unprofitable.

(d) Practical work, centres of interest and projects

The fact that children of this age are active and learn by first-hand investigation should not imply that they are continuously occupied with practical work. Useful as many centres of interest and projects may be, by no means all are as valuable for the children as they might be. Projects succeed if they are inspired by genuine interest and if the children see that they have a reasonable purpose. What is seen by an outsider might be impressive; the teacher should ask himself whether the children's interest is sufficiently roused to drive them to find out, think, plan and make, using books and any help they can take from him or other people to further their own learning; and whether what they have learned, and how they have learnt it, have made the enterprise worthwhile. It is also important to consider whether the project is so managed that it fully employs all those engaged on it. While

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preserving the children's initiative, the teacher has also to promote that kind of cooperation which makes good use of each child's contribution. Sometimes there is waste of time because too many children are somewhat artificially included in one project, sometimes because the undertaking is too little supported by books or material, and sometimes because the teacher himself has insufficient knowledge or skill to indicate the next possible step ahead, to guide the enquiries, or to sustain the children's endeavour across a difficult patch in their work.

The greater power which able children, as they grow older, show of generalising, of making inferences and of working things out, develops most vigorously when it can be exercised in pursuits which are themselves a chain of thought and action.

(e) Some examples of the kind of development to be expected between seven and nine

Among the many kinds of progress shown in the first two years of junior school life, that in language is extremely important. Though some children speak readily and with a surprisingly rich vocabulary and others only diffidently and with scarcely enough words to express all they would like to say, some uttering clearly and others clumsily, speech for most is their most natural and frequent means of communication and expression. Speech is improved mainly by example and use. Children learn to speak well by hearing good speech: their powers of expression grow as they hear stories well read and told, things or events clearly described or instructions competently and quietly given; and they need help to put their own questions or ideas into words which satisfy them as saying what they intend. It is essential that the teacher should resist any temptation to talk down to the children, to be content with ill-written, impoverished versions of what he tells or reads, or with reading books in which the vocabulary or style are so limited that what the children read is not English in any worthy sense. Clear, pleasant speech does not depend only on correct grammar and approved accent, but far more on the choice of words, the turn of phrase, and the tone and rhythm of the voice. Children's voices from about seven to nine often seem strident, perhaps because children of this age either cannot, or forget to, control pitch or volume; but they are ready enough to respond to the pleasant voice of a teacher, and there is

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perhaps nothing which is more influential in keeping them calm and self-controlled.

In reading there will be children who need skilled daily help until the ability to read is sufficiently established; but there will be others, the majority, who, having got so far, will leap ahead, and who need every possible opportunity to use and to enjoy books of all kinds on all aspects of their life in school and out of it. Moreover, they need, especially in these years, the chance to talk about what they have read, to let the words and ideas they meet in books pass into the active vocabularies of their speaking and writing. Reading aloud by teacher and children for a clearly understood purpose has an important part to play in this development.

At this stage children's interest in living things becomes more objective than before. They gradually become aware of the infinite variety of living creatures and of plant life, and the strong lure of collecting begins to take effect. Few have much interest as yet in classifying their specimens for themselves, but they generally appreciate an orderly joint collection if they are given help in arranging it. There is much for the teacher to do in guiding them in identification and arrangement and in asking questions that will promote closer observation and some connected thought that will lead to further discoveries.

Children are also interested in people at work, the mechanic, the builder, the shopkeeper and the cook; they like not only to watch them working but to handle their tools and talk to them. If any opportunities arise for bringing these people into the school it would be a pity to miss all the interests which acquaintance with them may well start.

Most boys and some girls want to see how things work, and primary education on the whole has not yet taken full advantage of this youthful curiosity about mechanical and technical things.

(a) Some significant changes

By the time they are halfway through the junior school the children are well aware that they belong to the school community, large though it may be, although for purposes of their own they form themselves into their own groups or 'gangs'. A

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'gang' gives a sense of power; its size is within their competence to control; it can accomplish things impossible for an individual, and it can often do useful jobs better because a number of boys and girls work together.

It is at this period that, in their 'gangs' and for their games, the boys often separate from the girls, since by this time the differences between them are becoming marked. They move and behave differently, and their interests sometimes divide them; they differ in their choice of stories and of books, in the subjects of their writing and in what they collect. The girls may be maturing physically more quickly than the boys, while the boys may perhaps show more daring and enterprise and have greater muscular strength.

(b) The children's attitude to others and to themselves

During his nine years the child's awareness and understanding of others has grown. He begins to judge that the actions of others are what he has learnt to call right or wrong; he knows, though perhaps crudely, the rightness or wrongness of much that he himself does. That sense of standards and feeling for values which were rather vague when he entered the junior school have begun to take form and can be talked about and discussed in terms of specific examples. It might be said that he is becoming conscious of his personal conduct as something for which he is responsible, though this responsibility must not be made too heavy a burden for him, because his own standards of behaviour are still far from being firmly established.

At this time, as the children's capacity for critical observation of their elders grows, it is especially important that the school should satisfy their needs on all sides. An able child's estimate of the school situation may be devastating. If his teacher or the school has failed to enlist his genuine interest and cooperation, he is capable of calculating to a nicety with how little effort and attention to school work he can manage, and may continue to live in school at a level far below his real abilities. Writing school off as something that has to be borne, he reserves his better wits and energies for other things which may or may not be good, and regards school with more or less docile boredom.

Common causes of boredom are that the children either have not enough to do or are given work which seems to them to lead nowhere. If work is to absorb their attention the children must

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be able to appreciate at least something of its purpose. At this age they are able to look ahead to plan what they do now for a purpose to be fulfilled a little later, and they are able to participate in the purposes of others, both children and adults.

(c) Creative work

One of the most remarkable characteristics of this age is the power of creative work shown by children. They can now choose materials sensibly and have a considerable knowledge of how best to employ them. Many have reached the stage where, as it often seems, their conception and their skill are matched, so that they are able, still without self-consciousness, to give convincing shape to what their minds conceive.

Throughout the primary stage children are fascinated by materials and show absorbed interest in what anyone is making, while many can, in the later junior stage, work for long periods and go to great lengths to achieve what they have set out to create. Many schools give them sufficient opportunities to work with traditional and generally satisfying materials, but in some the work in crafts falls far behind that in painting. Trivial occupations, far below the children's capacities, may usurp the place of true craft and the so-called crafts sink to the level of mere uninspired manual processes, without thought or feeling.

Children's power of expressing themselves in language is often striking. In what is spoken and written many of them appear, almost unconsciously, to select the manner as well as the matter, and there is growing sensitiveness to what is appropriate. Possibly girls may be in advance of boys in this respect.

Towards the end of the junior stage, in creative work, whether in language, paint or other media, teachers find that in some children inspiration seems to run dry, and that the promise of the previous years remains unfulfilled. Sometimes the reason is that the children's interests and imaginations are not fed with ideas and experiences which matter enough in their eyes to make them want to express them in some form. Sometimes the teacher fails to cultivate in the children the technical skills which they now need and demand, and to ensure sufficient practice to establish them. In written English, children are often handicapped because they have not learnt how to write at once legibly and fast enough to express their thoughts. Not infrequently progress in creative work ceases because the children cannot

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make their work good enough to satisfy themselves - aiming, as they often do at this time, at an adult standard. If they are not given the help they need as their powers and experiences grow they fail to develop further and may merely repeat themselves with diminishing effort and sincerity.

(d) Emergence of school subjects

In their earlier years children have explored what must seem to them a vast terrain, and they have had little interest in dividing it into what the teacher thinks of as subjects. As experiences become more closely related and learning more clearly purposeful, certain of the fields of study become more defined. Language continues to have a place in every study, as well as being a subject in itself, and it must include the study and practice of the spoken and the written word and the enjoyment of story and poetry. The arts can still pervade most activities in the school, but their practice demands material and equipment of a particular kind, and their study and the development of skill in them, at this level, occupy another distinguishable field. Mathematical knowledge and skills, though used in many connections, require systematic study in their own right. A child's interest in his environment slowly resolves itself into those studies which we conveniently call history, geography, nature study and elementary science. To adopt this classification before children have any appreciation of its significance is to make school work seem artificial and remote from their experience of life.

But probably too little stimulus is given in the later years of junior schools, to the brighter children especially, to use their powers of organising knowledge and of seeing the connections between one thing and another, although these powers develop rapidly at this time. By a flexible arrangement of the day, by plenty of discussion between teacher and children, by good methodical teaching at appropriate times, and by periodic reviews of what has been previously done, the children can be led not only to a more intelligent mastery of what they have learnt but also to more coherent thought about it.

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In the last two years of the junior school the wide range of the children's abilities and the diversity in their rate of growth are demonstrably greater than when they were younger. On the one hand, there are those who are on the fringe of requiring special educational treatment in special schools, and, on the other, there are the boys and girls who are the geniuses and leaders of tomorrow, and who are potentially cleverer than their teachers. In the small school, to the range of ability is added the wide age range within one class, though this is not necessarily a disadvantage if the numbers in the classes are small. Many devices are used in schools to give to each child work which is suitable for him, and to ensure progress in accordance with his rate of learning.

(a) Classification by attainment, ability and age

At the beginning of the century, the traditional class organisation was designed to facilitate instruction in the 'Three Rs', and the school as a whole was classified according to the children's formal attainments, mainly in these subjects, irrespective of their age or general ability. This legacy of the annual examination seemed to have advantages in that the pace of lessons might be more easily geared to the capacity of the children; but the sorry spectacle which resulted of dull, older children remaining in Standards II and III while young, bright children passed them by and went on to the top of the school caused further thought. Experience suggested many other considerations. A bright child of eight or nine requires different treatment from older children, while the rapid promotion of the abler children often leaves them with an education too narrowly or insecurely founded. Meanwhile, too, the slower ones are without the stimulus of their abler contemporaries, are often further retarded by their loss of personal prestige, and set a bad example of apathy to the younger children. It is now widely accepted that children are best taught with those whose stage of physical and social growth, interests and recreations, are broadly similar; that is, that age should be the main criterion for classification, though few schools would hold to this with absolute rigidity. The fact

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that secondary education begins at eleven has strengthened the custom of classification by age.

(b) 'Streams'

The principle of classification by 'streams', which is peculiar to our own day, is an attempt to promote children according to their age and at the same time to classify them according to their ability. It has only become possible since reorganisation into junior and secondary stages of education in separate schools has resulted in grouping enough juniors or seniors in anyone school to enable two or three classes to be made from the children of one year's age group. But it should be remembered that many schools are too small to be 'streamed'.

Some teachers find substantial benefits in the streamed school, where the brighter children work together in one class and the less bright of the same age in another. The narrower range of ability enables them to adapt the kind of work and the speed of it more easily to the children, and they get a clearer notion of what to expect from each child. Some Heads, however, have in recent years changed from a streamed organisation to one which puts the whole range of ability into one class. Their experience is that in the homogeneous class of the streamed school the stimulus to learning is reduced and that the slower children appear slower still, accepting the fact that they are too often called 'only B stream', and making less effort than they might. In the infant school, one of the important aids to learning is mutual help within the group, and some teachers in junior schools believe that this may hold there too.

In the streamed school there is paradoxically another danger, in that, since the children appear to be more on a level, the teacher is tempted to underestimate the diversity of quality and pace of learning which in fact still remain and which must still be catered for. Growth takes place in the round, and slow progress in one direction does not always indicate slowness in all; backwardness in reading, for example, does not always indicate backwardness in everything else. A classification by any single criterion must to some extent be misleading, and may cause the teacher to overlook the significant range of ability in different fields.

Some Heads, in order to avoid the predicaments to which any rigid system leads, prefer a flexible organisation that is not fixed

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throughout the day, and they may make different groupings for different kinds of work, or they may adopt, for example, a classification for the morning session that may be changed in the afternoon.

One of the most remarkable developments in teachers' skill over the last decade or so has been that of educating in one class children of very different abilities. They do this by arranging the environment in the classroom and school so that the children learn a great deal for themselves, either individually or in small groups. The teacher comes to know when to teach groups and when to teach the class or an individual, and in time he knows at what pace and in what ways the different groups of children learn best. To acquire this art is no mean achievement, though to many who have an understanding of children and a fertile inventiveness it appears to come easily. Others proceed more slowly, learning as they go, and are wise to avoid arrangements too ambitious or too complicated for their capacity.

(c) Handicapped children

Some children from the beginning to the end of the primary school find such difficulties in learning to do what other children do that they present a problem which worries many teachers. It is not merely that they are somewhat slower than the others in reaching stages which all eventually reach - it is that their approach seems feebler, or frustrated for physical reasons, or part of their general immaturity as persons. In some cases the cause of their difficulties, whether in reading or writing or in other activities, can be discovered by observation or investigation (which may be aided by that of the school medical officer) and a remedy found: then help given in the child's own class may enable him to make up lost ground, recover his lively outlook and develop as if he had not had a setback. This is the general experience with children who have become backward through absence caused by physical illness from which they have completely recovered; only if this kind of backwardness is neglected will it become serious. Other children fail to progress because some physical cause continues and cannot be removed, and they have to learn to overcome it if they are to get on - like the child who is somewhat short-sighted or hard of hearing but not sufficiently so to warrant being put under a specialist teacher. Others are retarded because their environment is too narrow or the

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people in their lives exercise an adverse influence. Still others - unfortunately a large group - make little progress because they have little capacity. Even to enable them to work to capacity makes great demands on a teacher. How best to help all these children while they remain in ordinary classes with children who are much more able, without giving less than a fair share of time to any group, is one of the inescapable problems of class teaching. Fortunately the present ways of teaching junior children seem to offer much to the dull as well as to the bright, and the emphasis upon working with groups or individuals cannot fail to benefit those who are handicapped from any cause.

The dull and slow often fail to win praise, even though they may work hard: the quick and bright usually get praise even though they have not had to extend themselves to do well. Without being insincere a teacher can praise the achievements of each child in relation to his ability and to the effort it has cost him, and can lead his class to understand that such praise is fair.

It is important, though, that parents should understand what the teacher is doing, and should not, because their child's efforts are approved, overestimate his ability in relation to that of other children. Where handicapped children are concerned a sympathetic but frank relationship between school and parents is of unusual importance.

It is a matter of general observation that within the last few years more children with physical handicaps have been retained in their ordinary classes in the ordinary primary schools. This is by no means always because there is no room in special schools. Even crippled children with fairly severe handicaps may be found taking a very full part in class life; occasionally even young severely deaf children are accepted in nurseries for normal children. Where this is done as part of a carefully devised educational scheme by which the capacity and willingness of the school to keep an individual child and his ability to benefit by attendance are both weighed up by competent judges, there need be no fear that retention in the ordinary school will be other than good for the child. Such arrangements are usually greatly appreciated by the parents but careful observation by the class teacher and collaboration between the head and the school medical officer are essential safeguards. Ordinary schools must not be asked to effect the impossible. One sign that all is not well would be some ill effect on the other children in the class or their inability to

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behave sensibly to the handicapped child. The handicapped child himself may not settle down in the group. But, if the other children can be induced to accept him as a playmate, no matter what help he requires or what curiosity his peculiarities arouse, the child will rarely feel self-conscious. Otherwise he is probably better educated elsewhere.

Most schools have a problem of educating children whose meagre mental endowment makes it unlikely that they will ever make normal progress, and for whom the hope of 'catching up' is a delusion to teacher, parent and child. Fortunately, most of them have much in common with other children, particularly in their out of school interests, and show their lack of capacity most in their use of words, in dealing with anything of an abstract nature, and where they have to weigh up a situation which is complex for them. They are mentally younger than their fellows, and are slow in attack and generally feeble in persistence. They need to be shown how to do things much more frequently than brighter children. In learning skills they require more practice to gain the same level of efficiency. And yet these children find it difficult to transfer the results of practice to even closely related fields, and much time and effort would be wasted if what is practised cannot be applied. Their interest very easily flags and requires constant renewal. This seems to come best from the teacher who discovers the child's interests and experiences out of school and can link them to the activities of the class.

Work which involves the handling of materials is likely to appeal to many of these children, clumsy though they often are. The freer atmosphere of the class in which talk is encouraged assists those who suffer from being 'bottled up' or emotionally inhibited. Making useful things, the quality of which is not compared with that of others' products, increases their confidence and it frequently happens that a growing power to do something well, whatever it may be, increases their self-respect and stability and leads to their taking a more active part in the life of the class or even of the school. But with other children the process seems to be reversed; for them it is improved morale that seems to precede improved work.

No child can thrive or progress if he is bewildered or disheartened. Those who are hopeful and confident may use even meagre talents to reach unexpected levels of achievement. Perhaps the most important thing for these children is to keep them

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hopeful and to make them welcome and respected in the community.

Even with the best teaching some children will leave the junior school with only a frail hold on the skills of reading, writing and arithmetic; they will use them hesitatingly when asked, and show little inclination to use them at all if left to their own initiative. They will need help of a special kind in their secondary school if what they have so far learned is to be firmly established and used as a basis for their further education.*

(d) The abler children

At the other end of the scale, in most junior schools there is a small group of boys and girls with exceptional capacity and quickness to learn. It is most important that these children should proceed at their own, and much quicker, pace, just as far as they are able to go. By the time they have reached their last year of primary school life many of them can calculate, talk, read or write fluently, and consult books as adults do. Their active curiosity spurs them on into ever fresh fields of inquiry; and, with their practised intelligence, their disciplined imagination and their full memory, they can themselves see what information they need and how to collect and arrange it in order to pursue their search to the best advantage. Beyond this, they can also choose a suitable medium to express what is in their minds. They are already beginning to be able to study in the adult sense of the word.

It is sometimes suggested that such girls and boys, who will almost certainly proceed in their twelfth year to a grammar or a technical course, should further enlarge their field of study by learning a foreign language, and there are doubtless some circumstances in which this would be of advantage. But such circumstances are not often present. The teaching must be live and mainly oral, and it is of first importance that the teacher's own accent and speech should be good, and that he should be both well-informed about the country whose language he is teaching and also a skilled teacher of young children. The necessity of having a class of not more than about twenty children, and the complications which follow any attempt at specialist teaching in

*Chapter VII on Special Educational Treatment should be read in conjunction with this section.

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the primary schools, cause most Heads to feel that it is unwise to launch into something which in the majority of schools could not, in present circumstances, be well done and which might damage any future interest and competence in the foreign language which is attempted.

In most schools it seems clear that these gifted children gain more by delving deeper into the fields of learning most readily accessible to them. What they seem to need above all is the experience of improving and using their own mastery of what they have learnt and of filling in some of the inevitable gaps in their learning. But this does not mean that they should be overmuch occupied with mere repetitive exercises which, though they may increase the children's speed in mechanical performance, make insufficient demands on their intelligence and powers of thought and may induce the kind of boredom which saps interest in school work. In mathematics, in enquiry and experiment in the physical and natural worlds, in the investigation of things of interest in the local environment, in books of travel and biography, there is plenty to challenge their keenest observation, constructive imagination, and hard thinking. They need books and materials worthy of their abilities, for no teacher has enough time, even if he has the knowledge, to satisfy these children's intellectual and creative needs. It is significant that these abler children are often critical of mere make-believe, and need opportunities to use their wits on matters of fact or on some invented, but practical, piece of construction. The kind of English composition, and the language and arithmetical exercises too often given to them in many schools, make far too little demand on their powers of thought and imagination. Yet only if these powers can be fully engaged will the children gain the confidence and ability they will need when they pit themselves later against new and more difficult tasks.

It is a pity that in some schools an examination concerned with the allocation to secondary education cramps the education of the abler children, and sometimes, also, the education of those for whom the grammar school type of secondary courses is unsuitable. Where the form of this examination over-emphasises speed

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at the expense of thought and skill in the manipulation of isolated words and phrases at the expense of the vigorous and sensitive use of language, and where the staff of a school allow their syllabuses and methods of teaching to be dictated by such an examination, the education of children in the later years of the junior school becomes narrow, impoverished in substance and overloaded with repetitive exercises. Sometimes the curriculum is unbalanced, and subjects which are not required for the examination are neglected; sometimes the subjects which form the bulk of the examination, English and arithmetic, are robbed of any content that is worthy of the children.

Even more serious, perhaps, is the premature concern of children of this age with learning pursued mainly as a means of success in a competitive examination, and the anxiety which often goes with such concern, though it is true that the anxiety is more often than not communicated to the children by their parents, and sometimes by their teachers.

The possible effects of this examination were foreseen in the White Paper on Educational Reconstruction of 1943:

'There is nothing to be said in favour of a system which subjects children at the age of 11 to the strain of a competitive examination on which not only their future schooling but their future careers may depend. Apart from the effect on the children there is the effect on the curriculum of the schools themselves. Instead of the junior schools performing their proper and highly important function of fostering the potentialities of children at an age when their minds are nimble and receptive, their curiosity strong, their imagination fertile and their spirits high, the curriculum is too often cramped and distorted by over-emphasis on examination subjects and on ways and means of defeating the examiners.' (paragraph 17).

But fortunately there are many schools which do not fall victims to this oppression. Constant thought is being given on all sides to allocation procedures and to their effects on education in the junior school, as well as to the validity of the procedures. In some areas already, the ill-effects of the examination are lessened by giving greater weight to the teachers' judgements about the children's progress and attainments. Both the examination itself and the forms of record used in connection with it to keep track of children's progress are constantly being reviewed.

But it would be too optimistic to believe that even the total removal of the examination from the primary schools would in

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itself make junior education all that it might be. The existence of the examination may serve as an excuse for lack of enterprising and enlightened ways of educating children; it may be blamed unduly for some not very fruitful practices which have endured comfortably for a long time, sheltered by the alleged demands of the examination from the searching criticisms which they should have received from Head and assistant teachers alike. Anything which is done to relieve the primary schools of the ill effects of the examination needs to be accompanied by a thorough review of schemes of work, timetables, and ways of teaching so as to take full advantage of the educational opportunities which freedom from examination pressure would allow. Of paramount importance in relieving this examination pressure and its attendant anxieties is the influence that a good junior Head and his staff can have on the parents', as well as on the children's, attitudes in this matter. In no sphere of their work are good public relations and the winning of public confidence in the school and in its aims and work so essential.

It has been realised that practice in the kind of test usually set at these examinations improves performance, but there is evidence that this practice need not spread over more than short periods at intervals during a few weeks before the tests are taken. There is no need for it to swamp the really educative and interesting work the children ought to be doing at this time.

The object of allocation at eleven is to provide each child with the course of study best suited to him at that time; it is not the final verdict on his education or his subsequent career. Secondary schools are already planning their curricula so that children whose progress outstrips the promise they showed at the age of eleven may take up courses adjusted to their needs, and the possibility of later transfers from one school to another adds further opportunities to take an appropriate course of studies. The full possibilities of further education also need to be understood by parents much more clearly than they are at present, so that they may see their children's abilities and their future schooling in better perspective. It is not easy for primary schools to bring about this full understanding; but where a Head and his staff have been able to win the parents' confidence in their assessment of children's capacities and needs, where they have explained the importance of the right choice at eleven and the nature of the tests employed and have conveyed to parents a

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better understanding of the types of secondary and of further education available, and where they have helped parents to understand what the junior school itself is trying to do for the children, misapprehension and anxiety have been significantly reduced. The support of the local education authority in this matter is clearly of supreme importance.

The men and women who teach in junior schools are faced with problems for which no traditional solution lies ready to hand. Certainly the junior school asks much from its teachers. They must possess, above all other qualities, enough resilience to deal with the energy and far-reaching demands of the children, and enough resources to meet their extremely wide range of intellectual and imaginative power.

It is scarcely possible for any teacher to cover the whole width and variety of all these children's interests with ready information and equal concern and success. But to do so remains his aim. He cannot do better than remain a student-teacher in the literal sense of that term.