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Plowden (1967) Notes on the text Volume 1 Preliminary pages Foreword, Membership, Contents
Part 1 Introduction
Part 2 The growth of the child
Part 3 The home, school and neighbourhood
Part 4 The structure of primary education
Part 5 The children in the schools: curriculum and internal organisation
Part 6 The adults in the schools
Part 7 Independent schools
Part 8 Primary school buildings and equipment; status; and research
Part 9 Conclusions and recommendations
Notes of reservation
Research and Surveys about Plowden |
The Plowden Report (1967)
A Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1967
Volume 1 Chapter 4
102. The National Survey pointed to the influence upon educational performance of parental attitudes. It follows that one of the essentials for educational advance is a close partnership between the two parties to every child's education. Surveys of this kind do not establish causes, only associations. There is certainly an association between parental encouragement and educational performance. This does not tell us which way round the relationship is. Is performance better where parents encourage more? Do parents encourage more where performance is better? Common sense suggests that each factor is related to the other, and both are related to the work of the school itself. Homes and schools interact continuously. An improvement in school may raise the level of parental interest, and that in its turn may lead to further improvement in school - or deterioration may also be cumulative, as seems often to have happened with the children of manual workers. The movement may start in the home. A strengthening of parental encouragement may produce better performance in school, and thus stimulate the parents to encourage more; or discouragement in the home may initiate a vicious downward circle. 103. Schools exist to foster virtuous circles. They do this most obviously through their direct influence upon children. Where teachers help children to grow, intellectually and emotionally, their very success is likely to evoke a response from the parents. Some schools are already working at the same time from the other end, by influencing parents directly, and the children indirectly through the parents. Can more schools do so and on a bigger scale? Only experience, sieved by discussion and research, will show how effective it can be. 104. Progress will not be easy. There are obstacles on both sides. On the average, schools in the National Survey arranged between six and seven occasions each year when parents could visit. This is creditable enough, but there were not many opportunities to discuss school policy and practice. Though the returns do not make this absolutely clear, it is doubtful whether parents could discuss their children individually with class teachers in the general run of schools (Appendix 3). In the course of our visits to schools, we were almost invariably told by heads that 'we have very good relations with parents', however rudimentary the arrangements made. It seems that teachers may be too readily satisfied with the social occasions which accounted for half the times when parents could visit the schools in the National Survey. (Appendix 5, Table 3). 105. There was also little evidence of dissatisfaction on the part of parents. The Social Survey interviews (Appendix 3) found that few parents made criticisms: 'Only 11 per cent were not completely satisfied about the arrangements for seeing the head or class teacher. Nine per cent felt that it was not easy to see the teachers whenever they wanted to, seven per cent did not feel that the teachers seemed very pleased when they went to the schools and seven per cent that the teachers would prefer to keep parents out of the school.' (Section 3: paragraph 25). About half of the parents said they would have liked to be told more about how their children were getting on at school. Almost a third thought that the teachers should have asked them more about their children. Even so, the great majority were generally satisfied. (Section 3: paragraph 32). 106. This may only be evidence of their low expectations. People tend to accept what they know and do not demand things they have not experienced. When special efforts have been made in a school, the response from parents, whether or not they were 'satisfied' beforehand, has often been striking. Parents, irrespective of social class, took more interest in their children's work in those schools in the National Survey which arranged as many as nine or ten meetings a year at times when fathers could come. (Appendix 5, Table 4). Cooperation with parents
108. At one infant school, parents are invited to attend school assembly on each Friday and many accept. Afterwards children take their younger brothers and sisters for a quarter of an hour to their classrooms while the head talks to mothers. Sometimes all the children, including the younger ones from home, stay in the 'hall' (a dining hut) while mothers visit the classrooms to talk to the teachers. During parents' evenings, mothers have used the practical number equipment, so that they can find out how and why their child should use it. They sew and make equipment for the school and help at all school functions. Fathers make corner screens, bookcases and hutches, and repair equipment. Mothers have become so interested that in the last three years four of them have helped the staff when qualified teachers were unobtainable. All have since gone for training as mature students to a day training college. 109. In another school fathers, more than mothers, have been the driving force in the almost 100 per cent strong PTA. They raised £8,000, partly through a summer fete attended by 1,000 people. Fathers, mothers and children scoured the beach for cockles to sell on a giant stall. They then built with their own labour a swimming pool, which is open in the evenings, at weekends and in holidays to all children and parents. The building team consisted of fathers who included surveyors, building foremen, lorry drivers, draughtsmen, metal workers, carpenters, painters, electricians and a foreman concrete mixer 'as strong as an ox'. The PTA pays volunteer teachers to supervise the pool out of school hours. A large greenhouse has since been built where the children raise flowers for the school and to take round to old age pensioners in the district. There is an annual summer school for parents, divided for the most part into groups for study of methods used in the school for teaching arithmetic, reading and so forth. 110. Another school was, if anything, even more ambitious. Under the auspices of the PTA, about 40 mothers and ten fathers formed a 'money raising force', which organised a series of fairs at which articles made by mothers were sold. The proceeds were handed over to a 'technical labour force', almost entirely composed of fathers in unskilled occupations who, under the guidance of a few skilled men, learnt to use tools they had never handled before. An information centre was built in the school grounds, and while it was being erected the children were writing hundreds of letters to obtain materials and data for display. A museum centre came next, for exhibits portraying local history, man-made and natural. Later came a children's theatre, which has been used for a drama club, country dancing club, choir and films. Display units, book racks and book cases, base boards for models and handwork trollies were built, along with a nature laboratory and two play houses. A garden was made where before there had been concrete. At every stage the children helped by drawing up plans and preparing costings as part of their arithmetic lessons. As a result of all this, 'The pattern of home-school relationships began to change. Instead of only meeting parents who had chips on shoulders, my staff found much smoother and more positive relationships for us all to work with.' In schools where parents give practical help of this kind, discussion with teachers about methods used in the school often arises informally over the job and enables parents to understand how the schools work and how to help their children more effectively. Parent-Teacher Associations
A minimum programme
(i) Welcome to the school
(ii) Meetings with teachers
(iii) Open days
(iv) Information for parents
(v) Reports for parents
Visiting the homes
114. We have two main reasons for making these suggestions. Parents have a right to know what goes on in their children's schools, and the right to any guidance they can be given about the support they can offer the school. The second, and more important reason, is the one implied by the results of the National Survey - by involving the parents, the children may be helped. 115. How well such proposals work depends upon the skill and tact with which schools approach the task and choose from the array of methods open to them. Many different approaches are needed. Whenever possible, an attempt should be made to measure the outcome in terms of children's performance. To show the kind of thing that might be done by teachers to influence parental attitudes, a small scale demonstration of this kind was made at our request with the cooperation of the Institute of Community Studies in a three form entry junior school. Most of the fathers were manual workers. The trial project is being fully reported elsewhere (2). 116. The action taken was rather similar to that which we have recommended - all parents were, for instance, invited during the year to a private talk with their child's class teacher; meetings were held for parents at which teaching methods were explained and discussed; and leaflets were circulated giving information about the school and about the methods used in it. The educational performance of the children, as judged by tests of verbal and non-verbal intelligence, of ability at reading and arithmetic, was measured in September 1965, near the beginning of the school year, before the attempts to involve the parents more closely, and again in May 1966, to be in time for this Report. Appropriate age allowances were made. 117. On the whole, both parents and teachers appreciated what was done. Most parents considered they knew more about the school towards the end of the year than they had at the beginning, and teachers that they understood the children somewhat better for knowing more about their home backgrounds. One of the unexpected outcomes of the discussion meetings was that teachers learnt, as well as parents, from hearing their colleagues explain their methods. As one teacher said, 'You could see how the other teachers teach - it was a sort of refresher course for me'. There was some improvement over the period in the children's performance, particularly in arithmetic. This improvement was most marked amongst the least able children. The private talks with teachers and the discussion meetings appeared to have the most impact. Many of the parents, when questioned at the beginning of the year, said they were puzzled about modern teaching methods. These seemed to be so different from the ones in use many years ago when they were themselves children at school that they often did not know what to say when their children asked them for help. 'When I try to help him he says we don't do it that way. They have to learn words in a block - you know, bits of words. Then they also learn words in a piece all at once.' The discussion meetings gave such parents the first chance they had had to find out what today's teaching methods are like. As a result, they could understand better what their children were doing, take more interest in their school work and give them more effective help. Quite a number of parents stopped worrying about their children's apparent lack of progress in the 3Rs when they began to appreciate the approach of a modern primary school. The performance of their children benefited. 118. The growing interest of parents in informed help on educational matters is shown by the response to an Advisory Centre which publishes a magazine every two months and answers enquiries by post. It is used by highly educated parents (3). If they have a need for advice it seems obvious that less knowledgeable parents have a greater need. To meet the demand an Advice Bureau was run for seven days in a department store in a large town. Although nearly half the enquiries came from parents in professional and managerial occupations, a quarter of those who wanted advice were skilled manual workers. The experiment was thought to be justified by the interest and enthusiasm of the questioners, their frequent ignorance of the way the educational system worked and the relief they showed at receiving support for their ambitions, or reassurance that their problem was not unusual or insoluble. A policy for each local education authority
120. The second proposal is about choice of primary school. How far should parents be given a choice? Section 76 of the Education Act gives it to them quite specifically - 'and so far as is compatible with the provision of efficient instruction and training and the avoidance of unreasonable public expenditure, pupils are to be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents' - and we would not want that changed. In practice the freedom is often nominal, and has to be where there is only one school in a neighbourhood or where one favoured school would burst its walls without some form of zoning. About half the county schools in the National Survey were not zoned. (Appendix 5, paragraph 4). We realise that choice is more often exercised by middle class parents. But we are sure that parents must be given some choice whenever this is possible and they should have information on which to base it. They are more likely to support a school they have freely chosen, and to give it the loyalty which is so essential if their children are to do the same. Whenever a school is unpopular that should be an indication to the authority to find out why and make it better. The community school
122. The 1944 Education Act recognised in Section 7 that local education authorities have a responsibility to contribute 'to the spiritual, mental, and physical development of the community'; and this responsibility is one that is as relevant to primary as to secondary schools or to any other branch of the education system. Both before and after 1944 there have been many experiments designed to make fuller use of school buildings. The Cambridgeshire Village Colleges inspired by Henry Morris are famous throughout the world and have spread far beyond the county boundaries. They were, and are, 'establishments planned as a community centre for young people and adults in such a way as to accommodate, in addition to further education activities, a secondary school' (4). A voluntary body, supported by the London County Council, pioneered play centres in primary school premises, open for local children when the ordinary schools are closed, and other cities followed suit. Some play centres are open only after school hours and some also in the holidays. In other places swimming pools, adventure playgrounds and play parks have been built in school grounds or parks and thrown open to the community. We have also heard of several primary schools in town and country which run after-school clubs meeting as often as once every school day. In one school in the National Survey 'there is after-school activity on almost every evening during the year when groups of children meet voluntarily for pottery, drama, recorder playing, gardening, rural science (partly in the surrounding district), football, athletics, jumping and agility work.' Parents are welcome. Many come to help and take the opportunity of talking informally with the staff about their children. We have also heard of schools which have organised clubs in the long summer holidays. In spite of these successful enterprises, recreational provision for primary school children by local authorities, voluntary bodies and schools is very uneven. Some heads cannot run after-school clubs because their buildings are used each evening by outside organisations. Only four per cent of the parents interviewed in the National Survey said that they had any indoor recreational and play centres available. 32 per cent were anxious for swimming pools to be provided and 27 per cent wanted outdoor playgrounds and indoor recreational centres. (Appendix 3, Section 2, paragraphs 57, 59). Virtually none of the recommendations made by the Council's second report in 1948 on out of school activities has been acted on. 123. The impression of members of the Council who made visits abroad was that in recent years more progress has been achieved in other countries. In the United States, for instance, community schools of one kind or another are now common. We visited one in New Haven, Connecticut. Its centre was an elementary school but in addition there were two extra sessions daily as well as weekend and holiday sessions, all in the charge of a Vice Principal (or head) of the school. The first of the out of school daily sessions was from 3 - 5pm and was for pupils from the ordinary school. The second was from 7 - 9pm and was for high school pupils and adults. These were the kind of classes that were organised in the afternoon session of one particular day:
In the Soviet Union and in Poland many schools have extended hours. These are used in part for teaching, especially for the most and least able children, and in part to encourage individual initiative and hobbies, which often result in achievements of a high standard. Pioneer palaces provide exceptionally good facilities and skilled help for some children. In Denmark there are leisure time houses which arrange recreational activity for school children and others. They have lending libraries of toys and well as books. The way ahead
125. There are, of course, difficulties which increase when buildings are modern and designed for children, and learning methods are informal. Rooms lead from one into another and it may not be easy to keep individual rooms out of use; paintings and clay models are carefully displayed; mathematical and scientific experiments must be left up until they are completed. A satisfactory solution might be to reserve the classrooms for school and after school use by children, and to provide adequate storage for community purposes. A hut in the playground can be valuable. An additional parent-community room has already been built in some schools by parents and designed so that it is suitable for use both by adults and children. The hall and playing field can often be used by children and adults without difficulty. Evening use should not be allowed to disturb the daytime work of the school, and the school should have priority at least for part of the week for evening activities associated with it. It would be sensible to give the head teacher, as in some of the schools we saw in the USA, and as in the Cambridgeshire village colleges, an overall responsibility for the school in the day and in the evening. It could be exercised, in schools which were heavily used outside school hours, by deputy heads, one primarily responsible for the daytime, and one for out of school activities. This arrangement would call for modification of the Burnham scale [see Glossary], which allows for only one deputy head for primary schools. At the least, the head should have some voice in the evening use of his school, and managing bodies should interest themselves in it and represent the school's needs to the local education authority. 126. We therefore hope that attempts of many different kinds will be made to use primary schools out of ordinary hours. Activities should be mainly devoted to children and families associated with the school rather than the community at large, save, for example, in a village which has no hall. Children can be given opportunities during a late afternoon session and in the daytime during holidays for carrying on their hobbies and for expression in the arts and for games. Parents can be invited to the school in the evenings to learn about its ways and to make things that will be useful for the school. Parents and others in the community should help to organise activities and staff the school during its late afternoon session, just as they have rallied to provide play groups and to support youth clubs. We know of an authority which launched a carefully planned campaign to recruit youth workers by large scale publicity, by organising a meeting of those interested, confronting them with the work which needed doing, and then providing some training. In this way they solved part of their staffing problem in this sector of education. Local education authorities, heads and school managers might run a similar campaign for helpers for out of school activities and a list could be kept of those who could give regular or occasional help. But a community school could not exist without some additional professional staff, including teachers ready to work for a third session, and they would cost money. We envisage that parents themselves would make a financial contribution towards the cost of out of school activities as they have already done in some schools and play centres. We have heard of out of school clubs now functioning where some play leaders are paid by the local authority and some are volunteers. This arrangement does not produce insuperable difficulties any more than it does in youth work. The local authority's contribution to costs would vary from district to district. In what we later describe as 'educational priority areas' it would have to be heavy. In many of these areas, as we heard from the children in some of them, 'there is nowhere to play and we can't do anything without getting into trouble with somebody'. An experiment is already being tried in one of these areas of appointing a teacher who gives one daytime session to the school and one to a play centre in the school. We hope that the biggest effort to develop community schools will be made in educational priority areas. Interesting parents early
128. Women's magazines and television can play a useful part in drawing parents' attention to their children's needs, particularly if they do not adopt too much of a middle class approach. A recent experiment in group viewing in schools and technical colleges, and subsequent discussion of a television programme on Growth and Play, met with some success. One viewing group in a college of further education led to a course for parents in the following session. In this college a parents' club is to be formed. Most of those who took part in the group viewing had had no previous connection with a parent-teacher association or a technical college. Contact was usually made with them through circulars to parents in the primary schools. More extensive publicity for opportunities of this kind is needed since few young parents whose children had not reached school age and whose need may well have been greatest attended the groups. Some technical colleges which have developed NNEB courses [see Glossary] are becoming known as centres for work in child development and are receiving requests for discussion courses from parents, as well as from women who hope to work professionally with children. Many opportunities for parent education, formal and informal, occur in community centres and other forms of adult education. Together with others such as health visitors, teachers could become an important source of guidance for parents on what to do with children out of school. 129. Much depends on the teachers. Every chapter could end thus - but perhaps it is even more apt here than elsewhere. Teachers are already hard pressed, and nowhere more so than in the very districts where the cooperation of parents is most needed and hardest to win. We are aware that in asking them to take on new burdens we are asking what will sometimes be next to impossible. Forty children will seem enough to many, without adding 80 fathers and mothers. Yet we are convinced that to make the effort will not only add depth to their understanding of their children but will also bring out that support from home which is still often latent. It has long been recognised that education is concerned with the whole man; henceforth it must be concerned with the whole family. Recommendations
(ii) The department of Education and Science should issue a booklet containing examples of good practices in parent-teacher relations. The Department should inform themselves of the steps taken by authorities to encourage schools to foster good relations. (iii) Parents should be allowed to choose their children's primary school whenever this is possible. Authorities should take steps to improve schools which are shown to be consistently unpopular with parents. (iv) Primary schools should be used as fully as possible out of ordinary hours. (v) Heads should have a say in the evening use of their buildings. When buildings are heavily used two deputy head teachers should be appointed, one responsible for out of school activities. This would involve a modification of the Burnham provisions. (vi) Parents and other adults should be invited to help the school with its out of school activities. Parents might contribute towards the cost of out of school activities, to supplement the costs borne by the local education authority. (vii) Community schools should be developed in all areas but especially in educational priority areas. References
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