HMI Primary Survey (1978)

Notes on the text
Preliminary pages Contents, Foreword
Chapter 1 The national survey
Chapter 2 The schools and the teachers
Chapter 3 The classes: organisation and arrangements affecting children's work
Chapter 4 The curriculum: planning and continuity
Chapter 5 The content of the curriculum
Chapter 6 The curriculum: scope and standards of work
Chapter 7 Associations between characteristics of the schools and classes and aspects of the children's work
Chapter 8 The main findings, issues and recommendations
Annex B HMI schedules
Index

A survey by HM Inspectors of Schools (1978)

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1978
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Chapter 2 The schools and the teachers
[pages 4 - 19]

i THE SCHOOLS

2.1 Schools provide the environment in which children work and learn. The characteristics of primary schools vary considerably from the small rural school with fewer than ten children to the exceptionally large school which may cater for over eight hundred pupils. Some children are accommodated in newly built schools, others in buildings put up a hundred years ago, some of which have been modernised and renovated, others not. In some schools children are taught in separate classrooms, in others children work in shared teaching spaces supplemented by withdrawal areas.

2.2 Primary schools have to provide for children with a wide variety of different needs, including those of the physically and mentally handicapped, some of whom may at some time require provision in a special unit or school, and those of the exceptionally able. The children also reflect the characteristics of different sorts of family background and of the neighbourhood from which they come.

2.3 The type of school in which children are taught also varies; some attend one combined infant and junior school up to the age of eleven years, while others transfer from a separate infant to a separate junior school at the age of seven. A minority of children attend a first school and may transfer to a middle school at the age of eight or nine; a few children attend a combined first and middle school up to the age of twelve or thirteen.

2.4 Of the schools in the survey sample, half were combined junior with infant schools, the majority of which were small schools with no more than one-form entry; in contrast most of the separate junior and separate infant schools were two-form entry or larger.

Figure 1 shows the proportion of the different types of school included in the survey.

Note: The percentages have been rounded and do not necessarily total to a hundred.

2.5 During the survey the locality of each school was classified as inner city, 'other urban' or rural (1). The distribution among the three kinds of locality is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Schools in the sample classified by locality

2.6 Within inner city and 'other urban' areas there was a similar pattern of distribution with substantial proportions of separate infant, separate junior and combined junior and infant schools in each area. Small combined junior with infant schools with no more than one form entry predominated in rural areas, see Tables 1-3.

2.7 One in five of the schools in the survey was recorded as being located in an area with marked social difficulties; three fifths of the inner city schools were classified in this way compared with fewer than a tenth of the rural schools.

ii. THE TEACHERS

2.8 There were 5,844 teachers employed in the schools included in the survey, of whom one tenth were part time. Three quarters of the teachers in the schools were women. The class teachers of the selected 7, 9 and 11 year old classes formed a quarter of all the teachers in the survey schools. Seven year old classes were taught almost exclusively by women teachers while 11 year old classes were taught by nearly equal numbers of men and women teachers, see Table 4.

Qualifications and experience

2.9 One tenth of the teachers were graduates and, of these, two fifths held Bachelor of Education degrees. Graduate status was more usual among more recently qualified teachers; of those teachers with more than fifteen years service slightly over one in twenty held a graduate qualification, while one in five of the teachers in their first year of teaching was a graduate, see Table 5.

2.10 Over three quarters of the class teachers had originally been trained to teach the age range with which they were working, see Table 6. Allowing that some flexibility to transfer to an age group for which teachers were not initially trained is desirable, this reflects a reasonable degree of consistency between the work for which teachers were originally trained and that which they were actually doing. Where teachers were teaching in an age group other than that for which they were initially trained there was no evidence that this affected the standard of work achieved by the children. (2)

Figure 3 Length of total teaching experience of all teachers in the survey schools.

Figure 4 Length of time spent in present school of all teachers in the survey schools.

2.11 One teacher in twenty had taught for less than a year; nearly three quarters of the teachers had more than five years teaching experience. Over a third of the teachers had taught in the same school for longer than five years and nearly half had taught in the schools in which they were then employed for between one and five years.

2.12 There was evidence during the period of the survey that the proportion of teachers who were newly appointed to the schools was decreasing, resulting in greater staffing stability within particular schools. (3)

Allocation of posts

2.13 At the time of the Survey, teachers were paid on a series of salary scales rising from Scale 1 to Scale 4, and beyond that to Deputy Head and Head. The number of teachers paid on Scale 2 and above in a particular school depended, in accordance with the Burnham Report, on the number of pupils on roll in recent years. Teachers in primary schools with 350 or fewer pupils were normally restricted to Scale 1 and Scale 2. Teachers above Scale 1 usually, though not necessarily, carried responsibilities for additional duties. Figure 5 shows the distribution by salary scale of all teachers in the Survey schools. The distribution between men and women teachers is shown in Table 7.

Figure 5 The distribution by salary scale for all teachers in the survey schools.

Note: Scale 4 posts less than 0.5%

2.14 Teachers undertook a range of responsibilities, in addition to those for their own class or their particular teaching duties, in connection with organisational matters affecting the whole or a major part of the school or in connection with the curriculum. The distribution of posts carrying special responsibilities for areas of the curriculum is discussed in Chapter 4i. The influence of teachers with special responsibilities is examined in Chapter 7vi and Chapter 8iii paragraphs 45-47.

2.15 The size and type of school influenced the kind of organisational posts allocated within individual schools. Teachers with special responsibility for an infant or junior department were normally found within a combined junior with infant school, while responsibility for year groups occurred mainly in three-form entry or larger schools. Posts of responsibility for an infant department were found predominantly in two-form entry or smaller schools.

2.16 Just over a half of the schools had teachers carrying responsibility for oversight of the library and just over a quarter for books and materials within a resource area intended to service the needs of a group of classes or the whole school. Both types of responsibility were more common in larger schools. There were very few teachers with responsibility for the organisation of arrangements to meet the needs of the very able pupils: these pupils were usually catered for within the normal classroom. (4) There were more instances where special arrangements for the less able pupils were employed. These included the withdrawal of groups and individuals for special tuition. Two fifths of the schools had teachers with responsibility for the organisation of the remedial work within a school. About a half of two-form entry and smaller schools had a member of staff with overall responsibility for the infant classes, see Table 8.

iii. ACCOMMODATION AND RESOURCES

2.17 About four out of five of the classes selected for the survey were in accommodation which was considered reasonably adequate for the normal work undertaken by the class; in two fifths of these classes the accommodation positively facilitated the work of the teachers and children. Nine out of ten of the classes worked in separate classrooms, the remainder being accommodated in open or semi-open working spaces shared by two or more classes. Slightly more than a tenth of the classes were situated in classrooms which were on a separate site from the main school building and a similar proportion were housed in hutted accommodation. In the classrooms that were found not to be reasonably adequate, the space was such that it imposed limitations on what could be undertaken. (5)

2.18 In few schools, less than one in five, had adaptation been made for educational use, other than for physical education, of the space surrounding the school, whether playgrounds, grassed areas or playing fields.

2.19 The available material resources - general equipment and apparatus, audio-visual and other teaching materials - were considered to be adequate for four out of five classes, in just under one in ten of these the material resources in the school were particularly good and facilitated a variety of work undertaken by the children. When the inner city, 'other urban' and rural schools were considered separately it was found that a higher proportion of inner city schools was generally less satisfactory than in other areas; but a larger proportion of inner city schools than schools in other areas was in the category with particularly good resources. This probably reflects the policy of allocating additional resources to designated schools in social priority areas and the resulting improvement in the standard of provision in these particular schools. (6)

2.20 In over half the schools reasonable care was taken to arrange materials and displays of work to provide an interesting and lively learning environment for the children. Some schools made considerable efforts to enhance their surroundings in this way, sometimes in unpromising circumstances. Vandalism outside school hours was a limiting factor in the creation of an attractive and effective learning environment in one school in ten of the total sample; vandalism was one and a half times as common in schools located in inner city areas as in those situated in 'other urban' areas and five times as common in inner city schools as in schools located in rural areas.

iv. SPECIAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE NEEDS

2.21 An important educational consideration for some schools was the facility with which children of families of overseas origin spoke and used the English language. A third of all the schools in the survey had some children on roll for whom English was not their first language. A very small minority of schools had a substantial proportion of such pupils. Just under a fifth of the schools contained children whose first language was a European language other than English; this is a similar proportion to those having children whose first language originated in the Indian subcontinent. Further, as a percentage of the school roll, the proportions of children in each of these language groups was similar, see Table 9.

2.22 There was a higher proportion of inner city schools with children whose first language was not English. Seven out of ten inner city schools had some such children compared with four out of ten in 'other urban' areas and one out of ten in rural areas. Half of the inner city schools had 3 per cent or more of children whose first language was not English compared with one out of five in 'other urban' areas. There were virtually no schools with these proportions of such children in rural areas.

2.23 Although inner city schools were more likely than others to have pupils for whom English was a second language, many of these children were in inner city schools which were not classified as being in areas of marked social disadvantage, see Table 10. The need to contend with pupils for whom English is a second language is therefore not only or even especially a matter for schools in areas of marked social difficulty.

2.24 Children whose first language was English but who had predominantly West Indian speech patterns were a special consideration in some schools. Six per cent of the schools had some children in this category although less than 1 per cent of the schools had more than one in fifty such children on roll. Of course, children from indigenous families also vary in their use of English, see Table 11.

2.25 Provision was made for many pupils who lacked facility in the English language through the normal arrangements for remedial teaching within the school. (7) Some children attended special language centres and occasionally such provision was made within the schools. There were too few schools involved in this work for formal analysis to show what standards were achieved compared with average levels of performance in the whole sample, but the following examples indicate the kind of practices which were observed:

'Approaching half of the school population is of overseas origin. These are mainly children born in this country, but whose families may not speak English at home. Children with a poor command of the English language attend an infant language centre before admission to school at about 5.5 to 6 years of age; no further specialised language teaching is given although the arrangements for remedial reading provide opportunities for conversation in small groups.'

'The teacher of English as a second language worked in the school each morning. She took five or six children at a time grouped according to their home language and not necessarily by their competence in English. The room in which the teaching took place was a microcosm of the school as a whole. The children contributed to display materials from their home cultures and there were examples of the full range of primary school work done in the room. The English the children were learning was based on the work done in the children's ordinary classes as well as on their lives outside school. The different levels of competence in English within a group were well used to encourage learning and teaching between the children as well as between teacher and child. Although conversation was the principal means of communication, reading and writing, including the writing of figures and use of numbers, also played a prominent part. Classes were arranged after school for mothers who wished to learn English.'

Annex to Chapter 2

All the data in the tables are weighted. (8)

Percentages in the tables are rounded.

The numbers are weighted and rounded. They do not necessarily add up to the weighted total.

Weighting
Schools did not all have the same chance of being selected for the sample. The same is true for classes. The reasons for this, which are complex, are discussed in Appendix B. Weighting is the technique of compensating for these unequal selection probabilities. (9) Unequal selection probabilities and weighting offered advantages (10) and were all part of the sample design. The weighted sample size is the total on which a table is based. The actual sample size is the number of schools or classes actually sampled.

Table 1 The percentage of schools of each organisational type falling within the different localities

Table 2 The percentage of schools of each organisational type shown by form entry (11) (size of year group)

Table 3 The percentage of schools of each organisational type within different localities by form entry (fe) (size of year group)

Table 4 The percentages of men and women class teachers of the survey classes

Table 5 Percentage of graduate and non-graduate teachers by total teaching experience in the survey schools

Table 6 The percentages of teachers of the survey classes by phase of initial training

Table 7 The percentages of men and women teachers in the survey schools by salary scale

Table 8 The percentage of schools having teachers (excluding head teachers) with organisational responsibilities by form of entry (size of year group)

Table 9 The percentage of schools having children for whom English is a second language

Table 10 The percentage of schools by area of marked social difficulty, locality and the percentage of children on roll for whom English is a second language

Table 11 The percentage of schools with predominantly West Indian speech patterns

Footnotes

(1) See Appendix H, Definition of locality.

(2) See Annex to Chapter 7 Note 2.

(3) See Annex to Chapter 1, Note 5.

(4) See Annex to Chapter 3 Table 17.

(5) The results of a more detailed study of the stock of school buildings, based on a ten per cent sample of all schools, were published in A Study of School Building (HMSO 1977).

(6) See Chapter 2 paragraph 7.

(7) See Annex to Chapter 3, Table 17.

(8) See Appendix D.

(9) See Appendix D.

(10) See Appendix B.

(11) See Appendix B for definition of form entry.