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Plowden (1967) Notes on the text Volume 1 (page numbers in brackets) Preliminary pages (i-xxii)
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 (486-495)
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
[page 69] 178. So far we have said nothing, except in passing, about immigrant children. Some of their needs are very similar to those of children in educational priority areas; others are not. They have often been abruptly uprooted, sometimes from a rural village community, and introduced, maybe after a bewildering air flight, into crowded substandard housing in an industrial borough. This happens to European immigrants from Cyprus, Italy or Eire, as well as to the Commonwealth immigrants from the West Indies, parts of Africa, India or Pakistan. When the immigrant is Hindu or Muslim and has special religious or dietary customs, difficulties for both child and teacher increase greatly. The worst problem of all is that of language. Teachers cannot communicate with parents; parents are unable to ask questions to which they need to know the answers. It is sometimes impossible to find out even a child's age or medical history. Opportunities for misunderstanding multiply. 179. Most experienced primary school teachers do not think that colour prejudice causes much difficulty. Children readily accept each other and set store by other qualities in their classmates than the colour of their skin. Some echoes of adult values and prejudices inevitably invade the classroom but they seldom survive for long among children. It is among the neighbours at home and when he begins to enquire about jobs that the coloured child faces the realities of the society into which his parents have brought him. 180. The concentration of immigrant families in the crumbling areas of industrial cities and boroughs has greatly complicated the tasks of their teachers. We wish to pay tribute to the devoted work that is being done in many schools. Numbers 181. The number of immigrant children in schools has risen sharply during the last decade. Immigrant parents often have larger families than the rest of the population. Many immigrants work hard and save to bring their families to the United Kingdom. The voucher system, as operated since the White Paper of 1965, limits entry of immigrant workers for settlement to 8,500 a year, but children up to the age of 16 can join their parents so that some three or four children may enter for each father who enters on voucher. In addition to children born abroad, a recent estimate (1) is that 200,000 children of Commonwealth citizens have been born in this country since immigration began on a large scale. 182. Accurate figures of immigrants in schools have hitherto been hard to obtain. Returns in 1966 from local education authorities to the Department of Education and Science show the following totals for four of the main groups of Commonwealth immigrants: [page 70] Table 2 Numbers of Children from Certain Commonwealth Countries in English schools, 1966: (Primary and Secondary Schools)*
Some 25 boroughs (including 11 in the Inner London Education Authority) have an immigrant population in school of more than five per cent, the highest single figure being 21 per cent. Because immigrants are concentrated in particular parts of these boroughs, the children attend few schools. In some schools, more than half the pupils are from immigrant families. Educational Problems 183. These families, though handicapped by unfamiliarity with the English way of living, by their language and too often by poverty and cramped living conditions, are often drawn from the more enterprising citizens of their own country. Though the range of ability and temperament is wide, many children are intelligent and eager to learn. Indeed, this eagerness sometimes proves an embarrassment when it is for the disciplined book learning and formal instruction of their own culture and when the language barrier prevents the school explaining fully to parents the different way we go about education in England. 184. Although some immigrant children are at first upset by the English climate, they are usually well nourished and well clothed (2). When their health is poor this is usually due to complaints which were common among working class people before the last war (3). Some special problems face local education authorities and others in areas with high concentrations of immigrants. Many immigrant children are at a disadvantage because of the poor educational background from which they have come. It is difficult to discriminate between the child who lacks intelligence and the child who is suffering from 'culture shock' or simply from inability to communicate. As a result, few immigrant children find places in selective schools. In one borough with nearly six per cent of immigrants in its school population, not a single child was selected for a grammar school in 1966. Children with high mathematical or technical ability are at a disadvantage because of their poor command of written English. 185. Teachers have generally not been trained during their courses at colleges of education to teach immigrant children. They therefore lack knowledge of the cultural traditions and family structure that lie behind the children's concepts and behaviour. Experienced teachers of immigrant children testify that they have found it of great help to know about family tradition and habits of worship, and about food, clothing and customs, which differ from ours. Unfortunately it is not easy to find authoritative books on these subjects suitable for teachers in training, and there has been a lack of in-service training courses. *These are children in schools in which there are ten or more immigrant children. An 'immigrant child' is defined as a child bom abroad of immigrant parents or born in this country of parents who immigrated after 1955. [page 71] 186. A start has been made by the Association of Teachers of Pupils from Overseas, the British Caribbean Society and others, who are helping teachers to acquire background knowledge. The National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants has begun the publication of a series of background booklets for teachers. The next step must be the inclusion in initial training courses for some teachers, and in some refresher courses, of discussion of the background of immigrant children. Local education authorities, where there are large numbers of immigrants, could hold induction courses for new teachers in these areas. The Curriculum 187. The curriculum of the primary school with a substantial intake of immigrant children should take account of their previous environment, and prepare them for life in a different one. Their culture can enrich the school's geographical and historical studies and, if used imaginatively, can improve other children's appreciation of the newcomers besides enabling immigrant children to value their own culture and language. This is easier to achieve with older than with younger children. It is particularly important to introduce the younger children to their new environment. Visits to shops and factories, to the local fire station, to the library, the museum, and the country can provide a useful background to their school work. Meanwhile, books used in schools should be re-examined. Some display out of date attitudes towards foreigners, coloured people, and even coloured dolls. Some are linguistically unsuitable, and some assume a social background incomprehensible to the newcomer (5). 188. Contacts with the home are especially important and, because of language difficulties, far from easy to establish. In one school (6) for example, 80 per cent of immigrant parents interviewed as compared with 20 per cent of the rest, did not know the name of their children's class teacher. The appointment of suitably trained immigrant teachers who would combine part-time teaching with welfare functions could be helpful. They could interpret the school's aims to immigrant parents and the parents' wishes and anxieties to the schools. 189. The education of the parents must not be neglected. Many of them are anxious to learn English and to educate themselves in other ways. There is a possible role here for married women teachers willing to give up part of their time to teaching immigrant family groups in the afternoon or evening. They would require courses in teaching English as a foreign language. 190. It is absolutely essential to overcome the language barrier. This is less serious for a child entering the infant school. He rapidly acquires, both in the classroom and outside, a good command of the relatively limited number of words, phrases and sentences in common use among the other children. He can then learn to read with the rest, by normal methods. 191. Immigrant children who arrive later in their school life have much greater problems. They need to learn a new language after the patterns and often the written forms of their own language have been thoroughly mastered. This calls for special techniques and materials and poses problems to which little research has been directed. It is necessary to distinguish between the [page 72] non-English speaking Cypriot or Asian child and the West Indian who speaks a vernacular form of English, influenced to some extent by 'creole' English. It is a dialect form which, if not supplemented by a form nearer to 'received pronunciation', may place the speaker at a disadvantage in seeking employment and in ordinary social contacts. Techniques suitable for the child who goes home in the evening to a family speaking Urdu or Greek will not be suitable for the child whose parents speak a dialect of English which may be close to 'received pronunciation' or distant from it, depending on the island, or the social class, from which they come. 192. So far there has been very little opportunity for teachers to learn how to teach English to foreigners. The University of London Institute of Education has provided a few places; more are needed. No colleges of education have yet run courses but we are told that seven plan to start this year. Some local education authorities are providing in-service training. The University of Leeds Institute of Education, sponsored by the Schools Council, is preparing and testing materials for teaching English to children of immigrant families from Asia and Southern Europe. 193. When the concentration of non-English speaking children in a particular school reaches a level which seems to interfere with the opportunity for other children to learn, or with the teacher's ability to do justice to the immigrant children, there may be a demand for dispersal of the immigrants. The Secretary of State for Education and Science, in Circular 7/65 (7), advised local authorities to avoid heavy concentrations of immigrants in particular schools. As the Circular points out, experienced teachers believe that a group contain- ing up to one fifth of immigrant children can fit in a school with reasonable ease, but if the proportion goes beyond a third, serious strains arise and it may become difficult to prevent the proportion rising further. The Department's views are shared by many teachers and were reached only after the most serious study of the implications. 194. Yet some local education authorities, after equally careful thought and a great deal of experience, have preferred not to implement the Circular. One teacher of long experience in a notoriously deprived district has written 'We have to accept that there are going to be schools in many of our cities with an intake largely coloured ... Dispersal at the primary stage, except on a limited geographical basis, is administratively difficult and psychologically unsound'. This authority has preferred to trust to extra staffing and enrichment of the curriculum in smaller classes. Other authorities are trying a variety of solutions (8) using partial dispersal, centres to which children go until they have some command of English, or a mixture of both. Whenever immigrant children are dispersed it must be done with great care and sensitivity. Children should be given special consideration on account of their language and other difficulties and not on account of their colour. 195. The Department of Education and Science have increased quotas of teachers for areas with substantial numbers of immigrants. Some authorities have been unable to fill these quotas, however, for the same reasons that they have been unable to staff the schools in their deprived areas. Our proposals for the priority areas (Chapter 5) may help to meet these staffing problems and our proposals for the training and recuitment of teachers' aides (Chapter [page 73] 26) have a special relevance. The central government are already helping in other ways: the Local Government Bill now before Parliament provides for a new specific grant to those local authorities with concentrations of Commonwealth immigrants. 196. We have had evidence that volunteers in the year between sixth form and university have helped by being available to work with small groups of children, under the supervision of a trained teacher. We were interested to learn that one authority plans to keep open some of its schools during the summer holidays for the continuous teaching of English to immigrant children so that they do not forget what they have learnt. There should be further experiment on these lines. 197. Remedial courses in spoken English are also needed for those immigrant teachers, especially from Asia, who, though in theory qualified to teach, find it impossible to obtain posts because their speech is inadequate. Holding university degrees and similar qualifications, they often cannot understand why they are not appointed as teachers. It is not easy to detect one's own speech peculiarities. Four remedial English courses are planned by the Department of Education and Science for 1966/67. All are heavily oversubscribed. There is a pressing need for an expansion of such courses which could also provide an introduction to English primary school methods and prepare some teachers for social work. 198. The purpose of the various measures we have discussed should be to eliminate, not perpetuate, the need for them. The time required to make the newcomers fully at home in the school and community will be an index of their success. The steps taken ought to be constantly reviewed as immigrant groups are absorbed into the native population. Special measures inevitably identify children as 'different' and their duration should be as brief as possible. Recommendations 199. (i) Colleges, institutes of education and local education authorities should expand opportunities through initial and in-service courses for some teachers to train in teaching English to immigrants and to increase their knowledge of the background from which children come. [page 74] 1. Memorandum from the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants and the Survey of Race Relations (September 1965).
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