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Hadow (1931) Notes on the text
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The Hadow Report (1931)
The Primary School London: HM Stationery Office
Preliminary pages Table of contents
Note on the nomenclature used in the report
The Committee's Report:
Suggestions on the teaching of the various branches of the curriculum of primary schools Index
Note on the nomenclature used in the Report
In this Report, as in our Report on the Education of the Adolescent (1926), we use 'Primary' for education up to the age of eleven, and 'Secondary' for education from the age of eleven till the end of school life. For the sake of convenience, 'Primary School' is used both for a school taking children from five to eleven and also for a school from which children under seven are excluded as being otherwise provided for. In certain passages in the body of the Report we have for the sake of clearness used the phrase 'Junior School' in contradistinction to 'Infant School' to describe self-contained schools for children between the ages of seven and eleven, i.e. the upper stage of primary education. Further, throughout this Report we use the expression 'Grammar School' as meaning a 'Secondary School' recognised under the Board's Regulations for Secondary Schools, and the expression 'Modern School' as meaning either a 'Selective' or 'Non-Selective Central School' (see Section 101 (pp. 99-100) of Chapter 3 of our Report on the Education of the Adolescent), or a so-called 'Senior School'.
Names of the members of the Consultative Committee
Sir WH Hadow CBE (Chairman)
The late Sir Graham Balfour was also a member of the Consultative Committee.
Terms of reference
To inquire and report as to the courses of study suitable for children (other than children in Infants' Departments) up to the age of 11 in Elementary Schools, with special reference to the needs of children in rural areas.
Analysis of the Consultative Committee's Report
Chapter 1 The history of the development of the conception of primary education above the infant stage from the beginning of the 19th century to the present time 1. The three main trains of causation which have brought about the organisation of so-called Junior Schools and Departments, constituting an upper stage of primary education. The implicit distinction between the Infant Schools and so-called Elementary Schools for children above the infant stage is recognisable from the very beginning of the movement for providing popular elementary education on a large scale
12. The Elementary Education Act of 1870. The scheme of organisation for Board Schools recommended to the first London School Board by Professor Huxley's Committee of 1871
21. The Education Act of 1918 and its effects
Chapter 2 The physical development of children between the ages of 7 and 11 25. The importance and significance of the available scientific evidence regarding the physical growth and general mental development of children between the ages of seven and eleven
Chapter 3 The mental development of children between the ages of 7 and 11 34. The available psychological data: The mental characteristics of young children: The Stratification Theory: The Recapitulation Theory
Chapter 4 The age limits for the upper stage of primary education 49. The upper age limit for primary education should be fixed at the age of eleven; in other words, the transfer from the Primary School to the Secondary (post-primary) School should take place between the ages of eleven and twelve
Chapter 5 The internal organisation of primary schools 62. The general function of the reorganised Primary School
Chapter 6 Retarded children in the primary school 68. Development of differences in mental capacity in young children
Mental Deficiency: Retardation: 'more retarded' children and 'less retarded' children
Chapter 7 The curriculum of the primary school 73. The traditional curriculum of the Public Elementary School
Chapter 8 The staffing of primary schools and the training of teachers 87. The staffing of primary schools
Chapter 9 The premises and equipment of primary schools 96. Premises
Chapter 10 Examinations in primary schools 102. The classification of entrants between the ages of seven and eight from the Infant School or Department to the upper stage of primary education
Chapter 11 Summary of principal conclusions and recommendations 113. The Committee's principal conclusions and recommendations Suggestions on the teaching of the various branches of the curriculum of primary schools 114. Introduction
Preface
The following question was referred to us by the Board of Education: 'To inquire and report as to the courses of study suitable for children (other than children in Infants' Departments) up to the age of 11 in Elementary Schools, with special reference to the needs of children in rural areas.' We began our consideration of this problem in November 1928, immediately after we had completed our Report on Books in Public Elementary Schools. The full Committee has sat 35 days between November 1928 and November 1930, and has examined 89 witnesses. In July 1929, the Committee appointed a Drafting Sub-Committee consisting of six of its members, with Mr WA Brockington as Chairman and with power, subject to the approval of the President of the Board of Education, to co-opt members from outside. (1) In this way, it was fortunate enough to secure the services of Professor Cyril Burt, Mr RF Cholmeley and Professor Sir Percy Nunn, who placed at its disposal their wide knowledge and sound judgement, and who have rendered invaluable help in the preparation of the Report. The Drafting Sub-committee met on 32 occasions between September 1929 and November 1930. We take this opportunity of thanking our witnesses for the valuable evidence which they put before us, and also all those other organisations and persons who were good enough to furnish us with memoranda, specimen syllabuses of work, statistics and other data bearing on our inquiry. We desire to thank Professor HA Harris and Professor Cyril Burt, who furnished us with valuable memoranda on the physical and mental development of children between the ages of seven and eleven. We also desire to thank Mr C Birchenough, Chief Inspector under the Kent Education Committee, to whom we are indebted for help given in the preparation of Chapter 1. In particular, we would express our sincere gratitude to the Secretary to the Committee, Mr RF Young, and to the Clerk of the Committee, Mr RJ Telling, whose continual and devoted services have once more placed us under a deep obligation. Mr Young's work in the preparation of the Historical Chapter has been especially valuable. We cannot end without recording our sense of the loss which the Committee has sustained by the death of Sir Graham Balfour in October 1929. He has been a member since 1926: he had taken a leading part in the preparation of our Report on Books in Public Elementary Schools and he took the keenest interest in the progress of our present inquiry. He had won the affection as well as the respect of his fellow members, and he contributed generously both to their deliberations and to the shaping of their conclusions.
Introduction
The subject referred to us was the curriculum for children between seven and eleven years of age in elementary schools, with special reference to the needs of children in rural areas. The boys and girls concerned have left the infant school; in a few years they will be entering one type or another of secondary school. In the meantime, to the number of approximately 2,500,000, they are attending for a period of four years, almost one half the whole period of compulsory education, the educational institution appropriate to children of their age, which is most conveniently described as the primary school. (2) It is the problems presented by the primary school that are the theme of this report. The problems are numerous and urgent. A school is at once a physical environment, a training ground of the mind, and a spiritual society. Are we satisfied that in each of these respects the primary schools of today are all that, with the knowledge and resources at our command, we have the power to make them? Are their buildings and physical surroundings as conducive to health and vitality as may reasonably be demanded? Is their curriculum humane and realistic, unencumbered by the dead wood of a formal tradition, quickened by inquiry and experiment, and inspired, not by an attachment to conventional orthodoxies, but by a vivid appreciation of the needs and possibilities of the children themselves? Are their methods of organisation and the character of their equipment, the scale on which they are staffed, and the lines on which their education is planned, of a kind best calculated to encourage individual work and persistent practical activity among pupils, initiative and originality among teachers, and to foster in both the spirit which leaves the beaten path and strikes fearlessly into new fields, which is the soul of education? What are the deficiencies, if any, which most hamper their work, and by what measures may it be hoped such deficiencies will be removed? Like other parts of the educational system, the education of children between seven and eleven is in a state of more than ordinarily rapid growth. What is true today will be irrelevant tomorrow, and to attempt a summary answer to these questions would be unprofitable. We discuss some of them in greater detail in the body of our report. It may be serviceable, however, to emphasise at this stage certain of the larger issues which call for consideration, and to indicate briefly the most fundamental of the conditions on which, as we believe, the further progress of primary education will depend. The first condition is that the special function of the primary school should be clearly conceived, and that the vital importance of that function should be recognised as it deserves. It should be easier to recognise it today than in the past, for the effect of the reorganisation of the later stage of education, which is now taking place, is to throw into sharper relief the significance of the earlier. In our Report on The Education of the Adolescent (1926) we urged that the time had now come when the system of public education should be regraded, and that, with a view to bringing names into closer accordance with facts, the older terminology, inherited from the quite different conditions of the nineteenth century, which described all public education up to and even beyond the age of fourteen as elementary, should be replaced by a simple and intelligible classification of schools into primary and secondary. We have had evidence, we are glad to say, that the introduction of a break at eleven, which will shortly be general, is of benefit not only to the children over eleven, with whom in that inquiry we were principally concerned, but also to those between seven and eleven, whose education is the subject of our present report. Its corollary is a heightened definiteness and precision in the interpretation, not only of secondary, but of primary education. Such a clarification of the purpose of the primary school is the necessary prerequisite of an improvement in its quality. It becomes possible to concentrate attention on the task of making provision for a relatively homogeneous group. If the successful development of secondary education depends on treating the years after eleven as a definite phase in child-life, with distinctive educational requirements and with problems of its own, the necessity for a similar realisation of the special province and role of primary education is not less imperative. The primary school is not a mere interlude between the infant school and the later stages of education, nor is its quality to be judged by its success in preparing children to proceed to the latter. It is continuous with both, because life is continuous, and it must be careful, accordingly, to preserve close contact with both. But just as each phase of life has its special characteristics, so the primary school has its special opportunities, problems, and difficulties; and these it must encounter by developing its own methods, perfecting its own technique and establishing more firmly its own standards of achievement and excellence. Its criterion must above all be the requirements of its pupils during the years when they are in its charge, not the exigencies of examinations or the demands of the schools and occupations which they will eventually enter. It will best serve their future by a single-minded devotion to their needs in the present, and the question which most concerns it is not what children should be - a point on which unanimity has hardly yet, perhaps, been reached - but what, in actual fact, children are. Its primary aim must be to aid children, while they are children, to be healthy and, so far as is possible, happy children, vigorous in body and lively in mind, in order that later, as with widening experience they grow toward maturity, the knowledge which life demands may more easily be mastered and the necessary accomplishments more readily acquired. If the central consideration, by which the curricula and methods of the primary school must be determined, is the sum of the needs and possibilities of the pupils attending it, it is obviously from those who have specialised knowledge of physical and mental conditions that, in the first place at least, guidance must be sought. So far as urban areas are concerned, the ordinary arrangement is for children to pass from the infant to the primary school between seven and eight, and we think that in these areas, where alone the arrangement is practicable, the existence of such separate schools or departments is clearly advantageous. When the reorganisation now in process of being carried out becomes universal, they will remain in the primary schools till the age of eleven. It is therefore the physical and mental characteristics of the four years between seven and eleven which require to be considered. The conclusions of leading authorities on the subject are set out in Chapters 2 and 3, for help with which we are greatly indebted to Professor Harris and Professor Burt. They are necessarily tentative, for the years between seven and eleven have been less fully studied than have some of the earlier and later phases in the growth of children, and for the evidence supporting these conclusions we must refer our reader to those chapters. The broad lessons which they suggest - the necessity of correcting the effects of earlier weaknesses, and of building up reserves of health to meet the stress of adolescence; the wide variations in intelligence which children show even by the age of five, and the consequent need for careful classification; the necessity of avoiding over-intellectualisation and of keeping within narrow limits of any kind of instruction which imposes a severe strain on the attention; the large place which should be given to games, singing, dancing, drawing, acting and craftsmanship; the importance of cultivating the imagination, of appealing to the emotions, and of fostering the social spirit - none of these is likely to be disputed. Any education worthy of the name must start from the facts, and the essential facts are, after all, simple. At the age when they attend the primary schools, children are active and inquisitive, delighting in movement, in small tasks that they can perform with deftness and skill, and in the sense of visible and tangible accomplishment which such tasks offer; intensely interested in the character and purpose - the shape, form, colour and use - of the material objects around them; at once absorbed in creating their own miniature world of imagination and emotion, and keen observers who take pleasure in reproducing their observations by speech and dramatic action; and still engaged in mastering a difficult and unfamiliar language, without knowing that they are doing so, because it is a means of communicating with other human beings. These activities are not aimless, but form the process by which children grow. They are, in a very real sense, their education; and the course of wisdom for the educationalist is to build upon them. Man is a social animal, and the school is a society. The school, being organised and equipped for the purpose, is able to offer fuller and more varied opportunities for activity than is possible for a single family. The teacher, with his special knowledge and experience, is in a position to see that the activities are fruitful, and that the child is helped to pass from one to another as he is ready for it. A good school, in short, is not a place of compulsory instruction, but a community of old and young, engaged in learning by cooperative experiment. Approached from this angle, the problem of the curriculum is seen in a somewhat different light from that in which it was envisaged even as recently as a generation ago. It has passed in the last hundred years through three main phases, which of course overlap. In the age before the establishment of a public educational system, when even some of those who agreed that it was desirable that children should learn to read, 'if only for the best of purposes, that they may read the Scriptures,' (3) were doubtful if it was desirable to teach them to write, since 'such a degree of knowledge might produce in them a disrelish for the laborious occupations of life,' questions of curriculum were naturally not a burning issue. In the period immediately preceding and following 1870, the period of the Revised Code and the early school boards, the dominant - and, indeed it is hardly an exaggeration to say, the exclusive - concern of most schools was to secure that children acquired a minimum standard of proficiency in reading, writing, and arithmetic, subjects in which their attainments were annually assessed by quantitative standards, with a view to the allocation to schools of pecuniary rewards and penalties. During the last forty years, and with increasing rapidity in the twelve years since 1918, the outlook of the primary school has been broadened and humanised. Today it includes care, through the school medical service, for the physical welfare of children, offers larger, if still inadequate, opportunities for practical activity, and handles the curriculum, not only as consisting of lessons to be mastered, but as providing fields of new and interesting experience to be explored; it appeals less to passive obedience and more to the sympathy, social spirit and imagination of the children, relies less on mass instruction and more on the encouragement of individual and group work, and treats the school, in short, not as the antithesis of life, but as its complement and commentary. What is needed now is not to devise any new system or method, but to broaden the area within which these tendencies are at work. It is not primarily a question of so planning the curriculum as to convey a minimum standard of knowledge, indispensable though knowledge is, and necessary as is the disciplined application by which alone knowledge can be acquired. The essential point is that any curriculum, if it is not to be purely arbitrary and artificial, must make use of certain elements of experience, because they are part of the common life of mankind. The aim of the school is to introduce its pupils to such experiences in an orderly and intelligent manner, so as to develop their innate powers and to awaken them to the basic interests of civilised existence. If the school succeeds in achieving that aim, knowledge will be acquired in the process, not, indeed, without effort, but by an effort whose value will be enhanced by the fact that its purpose and significance can be appreciated, at least in part, by the children themselves. This conceived, the curriculum of a school acquires a higher degree of unity than is possible so long as it is regarded as a series of separate, if related, subjects. It is unified by the common relevance of the growth of children of the different elements composing it. Growth is, from one point of view, and a point of view which is peculiarly vital for young children, a physiological process, and the foundation of a school's activities must clearly be care for the physical well-being of its pupils. On the work of the school medical service, beyond expressing appreciation of the triumphs which it has won and emphasising the urgent need of its progressive extension, we do not propose to dwell. But the health of children is not only the concern of a special service, crucial though the importance of that service is. The effort to promote it should inspire every side of the nation's educational activities, from the planning and equipment of the schools and their surroundings to the time devoted to games, and indeed to the whole atmosphere in which a school's work is carried on. Professor Burt drew in his evidence a moving picture of the effect of a squalid environment not only on physical, but also, if the two can be distinguished, on mental energy. Its result, he writes, is a 'lack of mental vitality ... and a chronic condition of mental fatigue. ... Much so-called laziness is really the outcome of a defence mechanism, arising out of genuine physical weakness.' The school cannot eradicate these conditions, but it can do much, and should do more, to counteract their effects. Excellent advice as to health talks and practice for children under the age of eleven, is contained in the Board's Handbook of Suggestions for Health Education (1928), and we take it for granted that all teachers and administrators are familiar with this. But, at this stage of life, formal instruction, as our witnesses agreed, is less important than the influence of the environment supported by the school itself, and the provision of ample opportunities for healthful activity as part of its normal work. It is idle to give lessons in hygiene and good manners if the surroundings in which children pass 27 hours each week are unhygienic or mean. It should hardly be necessary to insist not only that classrooms must be sunny and airy, but that every school should contain proper accommodation, lavatories with an abundant supply of hot water wherever possible, cloakrooms with facilities for drying wet clothes and boots, a provision of drinking water, and provision for school meals where necessary. The more closely the design of the primary school approaches that of the open air school the better. A point less generally appreciated, perhaps, though second only in importance to these familiar truisms, is that the physical culture which is the concern of the school should aim at much more than merely ensuring that children obtain the sunlight, fresh air, and exercise, which are necessary to health. It should have as its object, as we point out in Chapter 7, not merely well-being, but the simultaneous development of physical and mental powers in harmonious interplay. Bodily poise and balance, a habit of natural and expressive motion - these qualities are not merely physical accomplishments which add grace to life, but are intimately connected with intelligence and character. Such forms of excellence, gymnastike in the classical sense of the term, have sometimes in the past been regarded as among the ornaments of existence with which the schools attended by the majority of the population were not directly concerned. If, however, they are to become, as they might and should, a national possession, the outward sign and symbol of a common culture and civilisation, it is precisely in the primary schools that they require to be cultivated. Dancing, singing, music, the drama, are the means of cultivating them. Physical culture, as an agent, not merely of health, but of eurhythmia, must be the foundation of the school's activities, because a child is, in the first place, a growing organism. But the child is not only an organism with biological needs; he is also a member of the human family. His environment is a civilisation created by man. Just as, if he is to survive, he must adapt himself to the requirements of the physical world, so, if he is to be at home in that civilisation, as one free of the house, he must acquire some familiarity with the elementary processes which civilisation employs and catch a glimpse of the foundations on which it reposes. Language, as the expression of thought and the instrument of human intercourse, constructive work which at once stimulates the intelligence and gives an insight into the significance of the great historic crafts, the appreciation of beauty and the creation of beauty in simple forms, the enlargement of the individual's horizon by contact with other minds through literature and the discovery that life has a past and future as well as a present, some knowledge of the simpler facts of the material world - these things, it will be agreed, lie at the basis of an intelligent participation on the life of society, and are to be regarded, therefore, as fixing the general character and direction of the school curriculum. What is important is not that a high standard of attainment should be reached in any one of them, but that interest should be quickened, habits of thoroughness and honesty in work established, and the foundations on which knowledge may later be built securely laid. The production of juvenile authors, mathematicians and scientists is neither to be anticipated nor to be desired. It is reasonable, however, to expect that in the primary school children should learn, within the limits of their experience, to use the noble instrument of their native language with clearness and dignity, a matter in which English education has hitherto been noticeably inferior to that of France; that they should acquire simple kinds of manual skill and take pleasure in using them; that they should admire what is admirable in form and design; that they should read some good books with zest and enjoyment; and that they should learn that the behaviour of the physical universe is not arbitrary or capricious, but governed by principles, some at least of which it is possible for them to grasp. Such a curriculum includes several different elements. Each of these elements, language and speech, manual work, art, history and geography, mathematics, science and the study of nature, obviously opens unlimited vistas. Each is the sphere of a different specialism and each is often described as a separate subject. For certain purposes, and in certain connections, the description is just. The technique of learning or of teaching one of them is different from that which is required for another. But divergent streams spring from a common source in human experience, and methods appropriate to children of an age when they can follow specialised interests along the lines of logical development are not necessarily best suited to a stage when curiosity is strong but the capacity for logical analysis and consecutive reasoning is still relatively weak. Subjects are not independent entities, but divisions within the general field of knowledge, whose boundaries move, and should move, backwards and forwards. They are artificial, in the sense that the classification which they represent is not an end in itself, but the means by which some measure of order and system is introduced into the complex world of intellectual interests. At one stage of education it is important to emphasise the characteristics peculiar to each as a separate discipline, at another the common experience which underlies them all. Both these aspects of the truth are vital, and neither must be sacrificed; but they are not equally relevant at all periods of life. In the secondary school, which is designed for children over eleven, that which may more properly be emphasised is the first, not the second. In dealing with children of the age when they attend the primary school, the more important aspect is the second, not the first. We agree, therefore, for the reasons explained at greater length in Chapter 7, with the large number of witnesses - the majority, indeed, of those coming before us - who pleaded that the pursuit of primary school studies in the form of distinct and separate 'subjects' was not the method best calculated to meet the needs of young children. We think that the time has now come to consider these conventional categories with a view to relating the curriculum more closely to the natural movement of the children's minds. In making this statement, we wish to guard, at the outset, against possible misapprehensions. We are far from desiring to remove the backbone of intellectual discipline from the work of the school, or to imply that, even within the primary school, the same method of presentation is equally suitable for pupils of different ages, or to lend countenance to the suggestion that teachers should follow any stereotyped system or rely on any single device, however attractive. There are obviously certain parts of the curriculum - for example, reading, writing and arithmetic - which are the tools of education, and a reasonable proficiency in which requires regular practice. As children advance in years, they approach more nearly to the stage when different branches of knowledge become the subject of special study. Teachers must be guided by their own insight and experience, and must use the methods which they are conscious they can use best. With these qualifications, however, we are with the majority of our witnesses strongly of the opinion that primary education would gain greatly in realism and power of inspiration if an attempt were more generally made to think of the curriculum less in terms of departments of knowledge to be taught, and more in terms of activities to be fostered and interests to be broadened. Hitherto the general tendency has been to take for granted the existence of certain traditional 'subjects' and to present them to the pupils as lessons to be mastered. There is, as we have said, a place for that method, but it is neither the only method, nor the method most likely to be fruitful between the ages of seven and eleven. What is required, at least, so far as much of the curriculum is concerned, is to substitute for it methods which take as the starting point of the work of the primary school the experience, the curiosity, and the awakening powers and interests of the children themselves. Whether such an approach to the problem is to be described by some special name, such as the 'project' method, is of minor importance. The essential point is that the curriculum should not be loaded with inert ideas and crude blocks of fact, which are devoid of significance till related to some interest in the minds of the pupils. It must be vivid, realistic, a stream in motion, not a stagnant pool. Nor are we concerned to elaborate in detail the precise procedure to be deduced from these premises. If the point of view for which we plead is generally accepted, teachers will find little difficulty in translating it into practice. The fundamental idea of starting from a centre of interest and exploring in turn the different avenues which diverge from it is involved, after all, in all intellectual activity which is not merely formal or imitative, and if its educational significance is sometimes overlooked, the reason is not that it is novel, but that it is too familiar. What is needed in education, as elsewhere, is a little cold realism, or in other words, the art that overcomes art. A boy is interested in steam engines; let him start from his interests, make a rough model of an engine, discover something about the historical process of its invention and improvement, read a little about the changes in the life of society which have been produced by it, make a map of the transport system of his own town and country, learn something about the lives of famous engineers, and study in outline the part which steam plays in linking together different parts of the world. A girl has heard her parents discuss the price of food: let her learn something about the countries from which it comes, the processes by which it is conveyed, the crafts concerned in its production and preparation, what agriculture is and the changes through which it has passed and is passing, the life of the rural population in her own country and elsewhere. Children visit a place of historical interest, a church, a castle, the site of a British or Roman camp; let their work before and after the visit be planned round it, and the pupils be told of its place in history, paint such features of it as they can, make a map of the surrounding region, and act where possible some of the famous scenes associated with it, making the dresses and scenery for themselves. Such methods of giving concreteness and reality to the work of the school are already often practised and need no lengthy explanation. They will naturally vary from place to place, and from town to country. In the latter, indeed, they should be specially easy and profitable. We do not share the view sometimes advanced that a special curriculum should be devised for rural schools; it is even less desirable that the education of the country should be urbanised. The business of the school is to make good human beings, not countrymen or townsmen; nor is it irrelevant to point out that a large number of country children will later live and work in towns. What is necessary is that the curriculum of the school should make every use of the environment of the pupils. It will use one sort of material in a colliery or textile district, and another in an agricultural village, where nature supplies living specimens for children to observe, where plants, birds and animals, the configuration of the country and its geological characteristics, can be studied at first hand, where the weather is not merely an unavoidable inconvenience but a significant phenomenon, and where gardening and the keeping of animals can be carried on without difficulty. What is important in each case is that, while the indispensable foundations are thoroughly mastered, the work of the school should be related to the experience and interest of the children. Education must be regarded not as a routine designed to facilitate the assimilation of dead matter, but as a group of activities by which powers are exercised, and curiosity aroused, satisfied, and again aroused. This touches closely the ethical element in education which we must keep constantly in the front of our minds and in the very forefront of our teaching. There is a danger lest the technical aspects of teaching may be allowed to obscure the profound moral influences which the schools will have in the future life of the pupils. At the moment, we are thinking of the character of the occupations that the pupils will follow in after years, of the training that these occupations will give them and also what they will fail to give, and of how far the schools may compensate for the defects in this training. When the smith 'sitting by the anvil', and the potter at his wheel, and 'every carpenter and workmaster' had to be diligent 'to finish his work', and set his mind 'to polish it perfectly'; when every craftsman had to see a job through from its beginning to its end, and did not share it with a hundred others - the problems of school training, and of home training also, must, we imagine, have been simpler than they are today. High seriousness of purpose, sustained effort, persistence and will power, were virtues that were born of necessity; they were thrust upon the workman by the very nature of his work. Conditions have changed, and we cannot escape the consequences of the change. The question is how far what was formerly achieved through the character of man's work can now be achieved through the spirit of the work alone; and how far the schools can help to bring forth the fruits of the spirit. This is the problem that faces the schools today, a problem that wore a different aspect yesterday. We dare not hope that it will be more than partially solved; but in some measure, we trust, school training may succeed in making up for what must remain under conditions of work today inevitable deficiencies in the later industrial training of the pupils. Problems of the curriculum cannot be separated from problems of organisation, for on the treatment of the latter depends the possibility of a wise handling of the former. There are the questions of the relation of the school for children between seven and eleven to the schools which succeed it and to the infant school; of the classification of its pupils and of the lines on which their work is to be planned, and of the structure, equipment and staffing of the school itself. For the detailed discussion of these subjects we must refer our readers to the relevant chapters of our Report. There should be no sharp break between the successive stages of a child's education, and it is obviously important that close personal relations - the more intimate the better - should be maintained between the teachers who will receive children at seven years of age and those responsible for them in the infant stage. It is equally obvious that care should be taken that the work of the primary school is not dominated or biased by the demands of the later stages of education, or by the free place examination. When a child's whole future may be determined by his success in winning a free place or his failure to win it, the temptation to allow the curriculum to be influenced by the examination, or even to prepare children for it, is inevitably strong, and we must repeat the conviction, to which we gave expression in our Report on The Education of the Adolescent that the easy access of all children to some form of secondary education would improve the quality of the work done in primary schools, by lightening the pressure which at present they too often feel. But though the temptation is strong, it is one which, even under present conditions, ought strenuously to be resisted. The primary school has its own canons of excellence and criteria of success; it must have the courage to stand by them. It will best serve, in the long run, both the children and the general cause of education, if it develops its own virtues to the best of its power, and refuses to be distracted from its special task by an anxiety, however natural, to make certain that its pupils do themselves justice in an examination. To these topics we return below; nor need we elaborate here what we say elsewhere as to the importance of ensuring that the premises and equipment of schools are not merely adequate, but attractive and inspiring. Children think of themselves as their elders show that they think of them, and the expenditure involved in giving grace and amenity to the physical surroundings of education is repaid a thousandfold in the heightened vitality and self-respect of those who receive it. The internal organisation of the school calls, however, for a word of notice. Children differ widely in their natural endowments, and these differences become important, as we show in Chapters 2 and 3, even as early as at the age at which they leave the infant school. Unless the quicker among them are to be held back, and the slower unduly pressed, it is necessary to take account of these varieties of ability in planning their work. We are not thinking for the moment of the special problem of the retarded child, which is discussed at some length in Chapter 6. What we have in mind is the necessity of classifying normal children of different grades of ability in a manner which, without being pedantic or meticulous, may enable each to advance at the pace suited to him. The possibilities of better classification is one of the improvements made possible by the regrading of education, which has as its effect that the pupils between seven and eleven form a more homogeneous group than in the past, and we would call the attention of our readers to the examples illustrating various alternative methods which are given in Chapter 5. Naturally, they can be employed only when the school population is sufficiently large to make subdivision practicable, and are, therefore, inapplicable to the small school with 25 to 50 pupils. In such schools the problem is at once more difficult and easier, more difficult because children of different ages and capacities must be taught together, easier because, owing to the smallness of numbers, attention to individuals should be more readily secured. This has been done in certain rural schools with marked success. A different, but closely related point, for the careful consideration of which we would plead, is the importance of providing liberal opportunities for individual work under the guidance of the teacher. After what we have said above as to the necessity of the acquisition, by constant practice, of a habit of correct and lucid speech, the main influence in the formation of which must be the example of the teacher, we shall not be suspected of underestimating the value of oral instruction. But a school is a synthesis of different activities, each of which must be given its due, and all of which suffer if less than justice is done to any one of them. If there is a place, and a place of high significance, for collective teaching, and for lessons that bring together a class of pupils with the heightened glow born of common effort, there is also a place, and a not less important one, for individual study, and for the cooperative work of small groups of children, who teach themselves in assisting each other, and in the guidance of whom the function of the teacher is less that of an expositor than of an adviser and consultant. We are not concerned to advocate any particular method or plan; indeed we regard with some suspicion those which do not spring naturally from the experience of the teachers and take their colour from the character of the school adopting them. But we feel strongly the importance of ensuring that organisation is sufficiently fluid to permit of a happy mixture of individual work and group activity with class work, and of an easy transition from one to the other. In the school, as in life, what is most to be desired is a combination of individual responsibility and initiative with the cooperative spirit. Such a conception of the work of the primary school imposes heavy responsibilities upon the teachers. It involves not only the devoted and conscientious effort which is so freely given, but imagination and adaptability, the initiative to break with routine and the ingenuity to devise improvements. If this conception is to be generally realised in practice, as in an increasing number of schools it is already realised, teachers must not be hampered, as too often they are today, by unsuitable buildings or by inadequate staffing. We should deprecate very strongly, for example, any tendency to make the improvement of the schools attended by the older children an excuse for offering inferior accommodation to children under the age of eleven, nor can we accept the view that classes in primary schools may properly be of a larger size than those in schools for children over the age of eleven. As we state in Chapter 8, we think that, at the earliest possible date, the staffing of primary schools should be such that the size of classes in the former is not larger than in the latter. A class in a primary school should not contain more than 40 pupils, and, where there are a considerable proportion of retarded children, it should be much smaller. The head teachers of all primary schools, however small, should be certificated, and the employment of uncertificated teachers as assistants should be reduced to the lowest point possible. On the preparation of the teachers for their profession, which is discussed in Chapter 8, it is not necessary for us at this point to dwell. While it is clearly desirable that training colleges should bear carefully in mind the needs of the teacher of children between the ages of seven and eleven, we do not desire a system of training which would have the effect of confining teachers at an early period in their career to one particular type of school. There should be regular and easy movement from primary to secondary schools and conversely. The essential point, on which all else depends, is that the work of teaching children between seven and eleven years of age should be recognised as not less fascinating, less exacting, less fraught with human interest and social significance, or less worthy of teachers of the highest attainments, than any other part of the educational system. If the vital importance of this task is appreciated by the public, as it is already appreciated by the teaching profession, there is no reason to doubt that sufficient numbers of men and women, with the right spirit and qualifications, will be available to perform it. The evidence which we have received in the course of our inquiries shows that such appreciation is being increasingly given. It should not, indeed, be difficult to give it. Few features in the history of the last thirty years are more striking or more inspiring than the improvement in the health, the manners, the level of intellectual attainment, the vitality and happiness of the rising generation. In that improvement the schools have played no unimportant part. The primary school is on the way to become what it should be, the common school of the whole population, so excellent and so generally esteemed that all parents will desire their children to attend it. It is in the light of that ideal that we should wish our report to be read. We do not pretend to have made startling discoveries or to have enunciated novel truths. The root of the matter is, after all, simple. What a wise and good parent would desire for his own children, that a nation must desire for all children. Footnotes (1) Under Clause 5 (iii) of the Order in Council of 22 July 1920, reconstituting the Consultative Committee. (2) See the Note on page iv relating to the nomenclature used in this Report. (3) Cf. Sir T Bernard The Barrington School (1815) p. 99: 'The progress of a child through the Barrington School, may be considered as a preparation for the reading of the Bible.' 
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