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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 116] 291. The under fives are the only age group for whom no extra educational provision of any kind has been made since 1944. Since then successive governments have raised the minimum school leaving age and decided to raise it again in 1971. They have abolished all-age schools, expanded further education, increased the number of university places and done much for the youth service. Nursery education on a large scale remains an unfulfilled promise. Whether a mother has even a bare chance of securing a nursery place for her child depends on the accident of where she lives. The distribution of nursery schools and classes bears no relation to present day needs or wishes. But to start to meet the demand must cost much money, involve considerable building and employ many teachers. When all three are so scarce, can we honestly recommend expansion; or must we, however reluctantly, agree with the inaction of successive governments? We have thought it our duty to examine rigorously the educational case for and against nursery education as well as to consider the economic implications of expansion. 292. We have briefly described in Chapter 8 the earlier history of provision for the under fives. Immediately after the war some day nurseries were transferred to the education service. But there has been no expansion, first because of the pressure on the building industry, and later because of the shortage of teachers. Recently a slight increase has been allowed, but only to enable qualified married women teachers to return to work in maintained schools. Both the restriction and this partial relaxation have been introduced to try to preserve existing standards of staffing in the compulsory stages of education at a time when they are threatened by the great increase in the child population and by persistent wastage in the teaching profession. 293. In 1965 about seven** per cent of all children under five in England were receiving some form of education in a school or nursery class. The proportion has hardly changed since the 1930s (see Table 4 [at the end of Chapter 8]) although the quality of provision has almost certainly improved. A much smaller number of children attend local authority and private day nurseries for which the Ministry of Health is the responsible Department, and residential nurseries under the control of the Home Office. The types of institutions and numbers of children of two to five years in them in January 1965 are given in Table 5 [at the end of Chapter 8]. In addition, about 20,000 children are under the care of local authority or registered child minders and certainly many more are supervised by unregistered minders who, according to a recent survey, are increasing in number. (1) *See Notes of Reservation on this chapter
**Children attending part-time are counted as full-time equivalents. Most under fives in school attend full-time as do many in nurseries. [page 117] 294. One in six of the children in the National Survey* (Appendix 3, Section 3, paragraph 2) had attended nursery school or nursery class. The highest proportions came from professional and unskilled workers' homes - 25 per cent and 20 per cent respectively. Since, according to the NUT Survey (2), three-quarters of all maintained nursery places are in working class areas, it seems clear that many professional parents are making use of private nurseries. According to the National Survey (Appendix 3, Table 38) there were marked regional variations in the distribution of nursery places. Thirty-four per cent of children in the Metropolitan area had attended nurseries as against eight and nine per cent in East Anglia and West and East Ridings respectively. Provision of day nurseries is equally patchy - of the 11,000 local authority day nursery places in England and Wales in 1964 surveyed in one enquiry, 2,800 (3) were in Lancashire as were 15 of the 57 factory nurseries. Of a total of 1,585 private nurseries in England and Wales in one survey, 82 were in Orpington. 'Nursery schools, as opposed to classes (4), are surprisingly concentrated in a broad crescent stretching from Greater London through the northern and western Home Counties to Oxford and Birmingham, thence to the Potteries and the textile towns of East Lancashire, across the Pennines to the Bradford area and northwards to County Durham. The highest number of nursery schools in a single authority's area is to be found in Birmingham; London comes next. Outside this "nursery-school crescent" there are only a few minor concentrations, notably in Bristol, Nottingham, Liverpool and Hull.' (4) Three-quarters of nursery places are in classes in infant schools. Surprising variations exist between towns of similar sizes in similar regions. 295. Most, but not all, maintained nursery places are given to children who suffer some kind of social handicap. Some children are admitted because they lack companionship, others because their homes are too crowded or poor in other ways. They may come from flats lacking space, or because housing conditions are poor. Some are admitted on medical grounds or to help mothers nearing the end of their tether. Some mothers are working, although our enquiries show this is not the reason for most admissions. Often there is more than one reason. Teachers' children get priority because this is a condition for the expansion of nursery education under Addendum No. 2 to Circular 8/60. Since a nursery should not be simply a refuge for children in trouble, some children without handicaps get places with the unavoidable result that other children in need have to go without. The fault lies, however, with the restrictions on expansion rather than the selection of children. The Case for Nursery Education 296. There is a wide measure of agreement among informed observers that nursery provision on a substantial scale is desirable, not only on educational grounds but also for social, health and welfare considerations. The case, we believe, is a strong one. 297. Only two individual witnesses questioned whether expansion was desirable and that mainly because they thought teachers and buildings were more urgently needed elsewhere. Of the principal local authority and teacher associations all were agreed that it would be desirable, although some local authority associations were doubtful whether expansion would be feasible in the present shortage of teachers. Of the 1,852 primary school teachers who *No distinction is made in the Survey between independent and maintained nurseries. [page 118] answered our Questionnaire (Appendix 1, Table B.2) nearly 73 per cent said that nursery education should be available to all children whose parents wanted it, over 22 per cent said that it should be available only for those in special need and 2.7 per cent said that it should not be provided. In the National Survey enquiry into parental attitudes (Appendix 3, Tables 41 and 42) a third of the parents would have preferred their children to have started full-time schooling (including nursery school or class) before the age at which they had in fact started schooling. The 1964 NUT Survey of Nursery Education (5) showed that, where nursery education is available, the waiting lists are often double the size of the school, though some children may be placed on more than one waiting list. In 1966 in one urban area there were 1,818 children attending nursery schools and classes and 5,410 on the waiting list. In two thirds of nursery schools, the waiting period between applications and admissions is at least a year and may be considerably more. 298. The Nursery Schools Association told us they wanted more nursery places because most children can benefit from the physical care, the enriched opportunities for play both indoors and out, the companionship of other children and the presence of understanding adults which nursery education provides. Children need opportunities to get to know people outside their own family circle and to form some relationships which are less close and emotionally charged. The earlier maturity of children increases their need for companionship and stimulus before the age of attendance at school. 299. Many young children, of course, have a stable home background, companionship with their parents and their brothers and sisters and sufficient space indoors and out. But there are aspects of modern life in cities which disturb us. The child who lives with his parents in a tall block of flats is likely to be housebound as the child in a bungalow or small house is not. The 'extended family' with cousins and aunts and grandparents close at hand provides, where it still exists, a natural bridge between the intimacy of life at home and life with strangers in the wider world of school. But there are fewer extended families because more men change jobs and move to new districts. Mothers have less relief from their young children, lose the social contacts they have been used to, and may become less good mothers in consequence. And, of course, increasing numbers of married women are at work. The consequence of this is the new occupation of registered or unregistered child minders. Many professional families, too, rely on 'au pair' girls or other help to look after their young children during part of the day. Child minders and au pair girls are rarely trained to look after the young child. Their growing number points to the need for the transitional world of the nursery school or class with its trained staff to do for today's children what modern family life often cannot do. 300. Long before a child is five he is already using words and is often familiar with books, toys and music. The issue is not whether he should be 'educated' before he reaches school age because that is happening anyway. What has to be decided is whether his education is to take place in increasing association with other children and under the supervision of skilled people, as well as of parents, in the right conditions and with the right equipment. 301. Finally, there is evidence (6) on the special needs of children from deprived or inadequate home backgrounds. Some homes have positive disadvantages: [page 119] children from families in overcrowded or shared houses, or from broken homes, or even children of obsessive mothers, may have few opportunities for normal and health development. Early help is also needed for handicapped children and for those with physically handicapped parents. 302. Our witnesses were those who had worked with and observed the needs of young children. They quoted research on the extent to which nursery education can compensate for social deprivation and special handicaps. Hindley (7) shows that even amongst children below compulsory school age, the growth of measured intelligence is associated with socio-economic features. There is strong support among witnesses for the view of Bernstein and Deutsch (8, 9) that poverty of language is a major cause of poor achievement and that attempts to offset poverty of language are best made as early as possible. These researchers argue that thought is dependent on language and that some working class children have insufficient encouragement, example and stimulus in the situations of their daily life to build up a language which is rich and wide ranging in vocabulary, is a tool for categorisation and generalisation, and which, being complex in structure, develops concepts of time, space and contingency. The argument thus leads to the conclusion that since development in communication begins in the earliest years, one way in which the consequences of social deprivation can be overcome is to provide richer experience as soon as children are ready for nursery education. Other research consists mainly of studies of the improvement in mental defectives and in children from orphanages after nursery school experience, as well as of some work on children from more normal backgrounds. Hunt (10) outlines these investigations and, while recognising their importance, indicates the difficulties in evaluating them and the inconclusive argument that has focused on them. Examples of some of the difficulties are to be found in a recent paper by JWB Douglas and JM Ross outlining the later effects of nursery school attendance. (11) The educational performance of children from the nursery schools was higher at eight than that of other children, but this advantage was lost by 11, and at 15 they did slightly less well than their contemporaries. In no year, however were the differences statistically significant. Maladjustment among children who had attended nurseries was higher than amongst other children but, as is pointed out in the paper, children may have been admitted to nursery schools because of problems of behaviour, and 'the conclusion to be drawn depends ... on the original selection of the children ... (It) may well be that a group who were highly vulnerable at entry have been given substantial help.' The National Child Development Study (Appendix 10) may at a later stage produce further evidence on this issue. 303. The research evidence so far available is both too sparse and too heavily weighted by studies of special groups of children to be decisively in favour of nursery education for all. We rely, therefore on the overwhelming evidence of experienced educators. 304. Each of the countries we visited provides education for children before the age of compulsory entry to school on a more generous scale than we do. Evidence from foreign counties must, however, be used cautiously to support or reject arguments for nursery education, first because the age of compulsory entry is one or two years later than ours and secondly because the purposes and methods of education of children between three and seven are often different from ours. Yet the fact remains that many of these countries [page 120] believe that educational stimulus for young children is of great importance, particularly for the deprived. In the USA at the present time federal and other authorities and private foundations are providing large sums of money for programmes of nursery education to counter the effects of extreme deprivation. Mothers at Work: The Economic Argument 305. A further argument in favour of nurseries touches on equally complex and controversial subjects. The British economy and society are likely to change greatly in the next decades with results for child care which cannot be ignored. Mothers are demanding more and better quality services in schools and more medical and social services generally. Many more married women now go to work and more will. The proportion of married women in employment in Great Britain, when corrected for changes in age composition, doubled between 1931 and 1951. The National Institute for Economic and Social Research has made projections of married women's employment to 1975 which show a further substantial rise since 1960 and predict that it will continue. (12) Many of these working wives, of course, have not got children below school age, but many have and it seems that their number will grow. Different studies (13, 14, 15, 16) show that the numbers of women who work range between 12 per cent and 35 per cent of those with a child under five, while as many as 13 per cent have had a full-time job at some time since they have had children. Further information may be available from later reports of the National Child Development Study (1958 Cohort). In our own small supplementary sample of 249 children entering school in the summer of 1965, 21 per cent of mothers were working (Appendix 6, paragraph 31). The general pressure to raise living standards causes mothers to go to work to raise money and employers to search for additional labour of which the most obvious source is married women. Although economic reasons are the most important in sending married women back to work, it is also true that many anyhow prefer to work, often with their husband's approval, because running a home now offers insufficient employment for them. Such research as we have been able to examine does not prove that children with mothers at work are necessarily worse off. Prolonged and early separation from mother is known to be disadvantageous, but a short absence during the day does not harm the child who is ready for it. There was no evidence from the National Survey that mothers who were working had less time than others for their children in the evening. Many middle class parents pay someone to look after their children and send them, if possible, to nursery schools - as is evident from the data quoted in paragraph 294. In quoting this research we are not saying that it is better or harmful for mothers with children under five to work. Our conclusions are that many mothers will work, and that their children will, as a result, need places in nurseries. And since, in the absence of positive steps to stop it, the numbers of mother working will increase, it is possible to offset the contribution made by married women workers against the costs of providing nurseries. We assess these indirect benefits in Annex B to Chapter 31. Arguments against Nursery Education 306. The first argument advanced against nursery education is that the place for the young child is with his mother in the home - a view expressed in the [page 121] 1933 Report (17) - and that, in many homes, children have the experiences that the nursery school or class provides. Where this happens, nursery education is an unnecessary elaboration of these experiences and cannot give as generous a measure of adult support as the good home. 307. Some of those who have studied in detail the mother-child relationship in the early years (18, 19, 20, 21) hold that harm may come to some children through the removal from their mother's care and companionship at too early an age before they realise that separation is only temporary. They stress the need for the greatest care in the gradual process of separating the child from his mother. They argue that a child's sense of security depends on the presence of a familiar figure. In the first three years of life only those whom a child sees regularly can give him a sense of security, particularly when he is in an unfamiliar situation or confronted by strange adults or children or by unaccustomed events. If anxiety is aroused it tends to be cumulative and, so far from promoting healthy independence, such experiences might make the child either too clinging or too detached and unable to form relationships. Evidence of this kind points to the danger of allowing children to attend nursery school or class at too early an age or for too long a period each day. 308. Another argument against an expansion of nursery education is based on the shortage of teachers. This might indeed suggest that there should be a contraction in order to divert teachers to pupils of compulsory school age. Inevitably, more nursery education will cost money and make heavy demands on manpower and will compete with the needs of other sectors of the economy and social services which, like the hospitals, require large number of girls with similar educational qualifications (see Chapter 31). 309. The arguments in paragraphs 306 to 308 have an important bearing on the conditions in which nursery education should be provided, but do not disprove the case for it. We conclude that there should be a large expansion of nursery education subject to the following points: (a) It should be part-time rather than whole time because young children should not be separated for long from their mothers. Attendance need not be for a whole half-day session and in the earlier stages only one, two or three days a week will often be desirable. In the words of Susan Isaacs 'the nursery school is not a substitute for a good home: its prime function ... is to supplement the normal services which the home renders to its children and to make a link between the natural and indispensable fostering of the child in the home and social life of the world at large ...' (22)310. The major obstacle to expansion has been the shortage of teachers. The scheme we now outline seems to us to offer a way round this and other difficulties. 311. Our recommendations are, in summary, that expanded nursery education should be available for children from three to five in 'nursery groups' [page 122] of 20 places.* Two or three groups might make one unit - to be called a 'nursery centre'; or they might be combined with day nurseries or clinics in 'children's centres'. We believe that groups should always be under the ultimate supervision of a qualified teacher, but that the main day to day work should be taken by two year trained nursery assistants, of whom there should be a minimum of one to every ten children. 312. Where a group is supervised by a member of a primary school staff, the group will be formally part of that school. Groups not attached to a school but sharing the supervision of a qualified teacher might form a single nursery group even though they might be in two or three separate buildings. Nursery Groups and Day Nurseries: A Unified Service 313. We have not so far distinguished between a nursery school or class which is part of the education service and a day nursery which comes under the Ministry of Health. Day nurseries have made, and are making, a contribution towards the intellectual and emotional, as well as the physical, well-being of children from the age of six months until they enter school. Their purpose is now mainly to relieve family problems. Reasons for admission include the difficulties of widowed or unmarried mothers, poverty severe enough to oblige the mother to work and unsatisfactory physical conditions at home. The day nurseries are concerned primarily with physical health and are designed for children whose mothers are unable to care for them. They make their greatest contribution at the lower end of the age range. At present they take babies from six months or even from shortly after birth until entry to school. At the upper end, nursery education, properly so called, should be of increasing importance. An educational emphasis does not mean a lessening of concern for the physical health of the child. But help for older children calls for supervision by those whose training has given them broad educational perspectives and skills. In some areas day nurseries and nursery schools have good co-operative arrangements through the help of a joint committee which shares the expert knowledge of officials from both the health and education departments. This we welcome. 314. Although there is no obvious break in children's development in the years below school age we think that, since lines must be drawn somewhere, the day nursery is the proper place for those children who have to be away from their homes before the age of three. An institution with a more directly educational aim is right for children of three and over and for this reason it should be provided by the local education authority under the Education Acts instead of being administered by the health authorities. This argument is strengthened if our proposals for changes in the dates of entry to compulsory schooling for some children are accepted (see Chapter 10). Children in long term care might also attend the nursery groups, provided that the special strains to which the children are subject are taken into account before they are assumed to be ready for nursery education. 315. If the nursery provision for children aged three and over is to be in nursery groups administered under the Education Acts, the character of the day nurseries will change. Furthermore, day nurseries provide care through- *When there is more than one nursery group, children and the assistants responsible for them will work co-operatively. [page 123] out normal working hours and in the holiday periods for children with difficult home circumstances. Only a few nursery schools care for children beyond normal nursery hours. These problems can be overcome if the larger nursery centres, and particularly those that form part of the children's centres containing day nurseries as well, make arrangements for children who must stay all day. At present the number of children involved is small: the average daily attendance at day nurseries of children under five was 16,470 in 1965 - although the majority attend beyond normal school hours. The Age Range of Nursery Education 316. The evidence suggests that most children are too young at two to tolerate separation from their mothers (see paragraphs 306 and 307 above). Some will be ready at three, but for others four will be a better age to join a nursery group. It will be for parents to decide and most parents will exercise this right sensibly. Nursery education should be available to children at any time after the beginning of the school year after they reach the age of three. Part-Time Nursery Education 317. Since it is harmful to remove a child too suddenly or for too long from his mother, part-time attendance should be the normal pattern of nursery education. Children should be introduced gradually even to part-time education. It is the practice in many nurseries for the mother to stay with her child when he first enters and this should be encouraged. Teachers and parents should take account of the differing needs of young children in deciding at what age and, to begin with, for what periods each week and for how long each session, they should attend a nursery group. The minority of children who will attend full-time will have an even greater need for gradual introduction. The Encouragement of Attendance 318. Evidence from such bodies as the Save the Children fund and the Family Service Units shows that while many parents of children from impoverished home backgrounds respond to the advice of health visitors and others, a minority are unwilling or unable to make the effort even to take their children to a clinic, let alone a nursery. There is no easy solution. Compulsory attendance at a nursery group would be unworkable, even for those with special needs, for enforcement would place an intolerable burden on both the local authorities and on nursery staffs, and would create a relationship with the parents contrary to the whole concept of nursery education. A more widespread provision of nursery groups will help in reducing the distance mothers have to travel. In exceptional cases local education authorities or voluntary bodies might arrange for children to be brought to the nursery groups or taken home again. 319. We hope that these parents will appreciate the nursery groups and that as the health, social work and education services become better co-ordinated there will be more and better contact between them. In any event local education authorities can make full use of the advice of health visitors and others from whose records information about children in need can be gained. As nursery education becomes more generally available health visitors may [page 124] find it easier to persuade families to make more use of it. How far the nursery places are used by children in special need should be carefully studied by local authorities and by the Department of Education and Science so that further methods of persuasion can be brought into play if this proves necessary. More positively, the problem must be tackled by the development of parental education, including that of parents of children of pre-school age, which we suggest in Chapter 4. Nursery Education and Parents 320. Nursery education creates contacts between parents, the educational service and the related health and welfare services and can thereby improve the quality of the whole educational process. As the Hadow Report of 1933 pointed out, nursery education brings parents and teachers together in a setting where good attitudes towards community problems can flourish and where advice on all aspects of child rearing can be easily sought. At that time as many as 40 per cent entered school at five in need of medical attention. Even now, while three-quarters of mothers attend child welfare clinics during the first year of their child's life, only a quarter persist between one and five. Nursery education should throughout be an affair of co-operation between the nursery and home and it will only succeed to the full if it carries the parents into partnership. Support does not mean mild consent; it means the kind of active concern which can only come out of joint activity and out of close knowledge by the parents of what the schools are doing and why. The nursery group needs to be an outpost of adult education if it is to attain its gaol for young children. 321. In Chapter 4 ways of enabling parents to participate in the life of the school have been described. Their active help can more easily be used in nursery groups. Some mothers may train as nursery assistants and work in the nurseries. Others may be content to help in less skilled ways. In some instances in the country, mothers are already being drawn into the life of the nursery. The head of one nursery school in which parents are encouraged to help wrote 'It increases their sense of belonging and gives their children tremendous joy'. The child sees teacher and mother working together and accepting the same standards of behaviour. We saw this being done in one area of California with outstanding success. In some kindergartens visited it was a condition of children's admission that mothers should help and be present at discussions. We should not wish to go as far as this as it might exclude some children who should be admitted. 322. Parental involvement with the nursery is bound to be close if only because at this stage mothers must bring their children to it. If parents become used to talking to teachers, more may continue to be interested in the work of the schools as their children get older. Contact with parents will be an important duty of the qualified teacher who is in control of the nursery group. The Future of Voluntary Nursery Groups 323. Many voluntary nursery groups have done valuable work with little financial or other encouragement and their contribution deserves to be widely recognised. They draw upon parental enthusiasm and effort of a kind that we [page 125] hope parents will put into the maintained nursery groups. There are about 600 groups established by the Pre-School Playgroups Association which are run on a part-time basis in such accommodation as is available, staffed mostly by mothers who are not qualified teachers and with active participation from other parents. Although guidance and help are available from the Association's headquarters the groups mainly exist where parents have the initiative and ability to set them up and to run them. Costs are met by daily charges for attendance. The Department of Education and Science have recently made a small grant towards the Association's headquarter expenses. Groups run by the Save the Children Fund also provide part-time places and are in the charge of nursery assistants, supervised by qualified teachers. In meeting requests for groups to be established, the Save the Children Fund gives priority to areas of social need. Costs are met largely from the funds of the Society, although in some areas grants have been made by local authorities. We understand that the Pre-School Playgroups Association wish to continue and extend their activities and the Save the Children Fund wish to continue to provide groups in especially difficult situations where experimental methods are needed, at least until maintained groups are generally available. 324. Nursery groups should be provided, in the long run, by local education authorities. Until enough maintained places are available, however, local education authorities should be given the power and should be encouraged to give financial and other assistance to non profit making associations which, in their opinion, fill a need they cannot meet. This should include some arrangement for the training of their staff to be approved by the endorsing body which we suggest should be responsible for the training of nursery assistants. 325. At present, the premises of voluntary groups are inspected by the local health authorities. Where they continue to exist, with or without help from public funds, and the majority of children attending are between three and five years, we recommend that inspection of them by local authorities and Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools should be similar to that of the maintained nurseries. Siting of Nurseries 326. Ideally, all services, including nursery, for the care of young children should be grouped together and placed near the children's homes and the primary schools. However, the nursery groups will have to be placed at first where they will fit most easily and that will often be in existing primary schools. Elsewhere, they might be on the same site as children's clinics. It is intended to build 500,000 new houses a year and in the rebuilding of an area it should be possible to build nurseries near a health centre, a group practice of doctors or other community facilities. Since industry would benefit from an expansion of nursery education because labour will be easier to recruit (see Annex B to Chapter 31) factories might provide premises for a group which can then be maintained by the local education authority. In new housing development, particularly in blocks of high flats which increasingly are being built in the cities, space should be left for nursery education. The planning of accommodation for nursery groups should become as much a commonplace in the development of new areas as that of other community facilities, although we hope that their siting will be undertaken with more sensitivity to users' needs than is common at present. Nursery groups will [page 126] need to be in addition to the play centres and 'one o'clock clubs' which cater all the year round for children and their mothers and which are part of the amenities of a district. The needs of young children for spaces where they can play safely with other children and yet be near enough to be in constant contact with an adult have been too often forgotten in post-war urban development. The planners have accepted in recent years that a family must have a space for a car but few have considered the needs of pre-school children. 327. We turn now to the problems of supply, staff, buildings and money that arise from our proposals that nursery education should be expanded. The ideal pattern that all nursery teachers would like to see established, if there were no shortages of teachers and buildings, would be one in which groups of 20 children would be assigned to the care of one trained teacher and one assistant with NNEB or other recognised training. But it will not possible for some decades to find the 30-40,000 teachers for nursery education that this pattern would demand and we therefore propose a somewhat different pattern that will allow nursery education to develop, even if under conditions which are not ideal. The Number of Places Needed 328. Eventually there should be nursery places for all children whose parents wish them to attend from the beginning of the school year after the age of three.* Since attendance will be voluntary it is not easy to estimate the number of places that will be needed. We have based our estimates of demand on the following assumptions: (a) nursery education will be available either for a morning or an afternoon session for five days a week except that over the country as a whole provision will be made for 15 per cent of children to attend both a morning and an afternoon session (see paragraphs 329 and 330 below). We should, however, expect some of the younger children to attend fewer than five sessions a week and less than a full session and that some will enter nursery groups at different times throughout the year;*In this chapter we refer to 'three year olds' and 'four year olds'. In fact, their ages will range at the beginning of the school year from 3.0 to 3.11 and 4.0 to 4.11 respectively. Some three year olds will therefore reach four early in the school year. **These figures are based on current population projections. If, however, the most recent trends in births continue, some downward movement is likely. [page 127] Others will continue to make private arrangements and others, particularly in the country, will find the nearest nursery group inaccessible.Full-Time Attendance for a Minority 329. We assume that 15 per cent of children between three plus and five plus will attend full-time. The figure of 15 per cent is built up on the following assumptions: (a) as we have said in paragraph 305, many mothers of children under five years work and many of them work full-time. The numbers are likely to increase if more married women continue to return to employment. The various studies (23) show different figures but the general picture that emerges is that at least five per cent of mothers with children between three and five work full-time;330. The extent to which mothers of young children should be encouraged by the provision of full-time nursery places to go out to work raises a question of principle. Some mothers must work because they need the money. The government, for reasons of economic policy, wish to see more women working. But to work full-time a mother must expect that her child will attend nursery for extended hours and during school holidays. Our evidence is, however, that it is generally undesirable, except to prevent a greater evil, to separate mother and child for a whole day in the nursery. We do not believe that full-time nursery places should be provided even for children who might tolerate separation without harm, except for exceptionally good reasons. We have no reason to suppose that working mothers, as a group, care any less about the well-being of their children than do mothers who do not work. Indeed, it is interesting that, in our supplementary sample (Appendix 6, paragraph 31) of children just starting school, 42 per cent of the working mothers would prefer their children to start part-time as opposed to 35 per cent of non-working mothers. But some mothers who are not obliged to work may work full-time, regardless of their children's welfare. It is no business of the educational service to encourage these mothers to do so. It is true, unfortunately, that the refusal of full-time nursery places for their children may prompt some of them to make unsuitable arrangements for their [page 128] children's care during working hours. All the same, we consider that mothers who cannot satisfy the authorities that they have exceptionally good reasons for working should have low priority for full-time nursery for their children. Places Needed 331. We cannot forecast what proportion of the threes and fours will eventually attend the nursery groups. We think most of the places will be filled by children attending morning or afternoon sessions but that a minority will attend full-time. But it may be, at least in the early years of the scheme, that a smaller proportion of the three and four year olds will attend than we have assumed. The National Survey shows that more than two thirds of parents would have liked their children to have started full-time school before the age of five. Our figures are intended to be estimates of the maximum numbers of places which would be required. On this assumption, 746,000 full-time places might be required by 1975 and 776,0000 by 1979, as is shown in Table 10.
Staffing the Nurseries 332. How should the nurseries be staffed and how many teachers and other trained staff will be needed for them? Will it be possible to find as many as are needed? 333. We suggest that the day to day running of the nurseries should be in the hands of trained nursery assistants but that every 60 full-time places should be supervised by a qualified teacher. In practice, this will mean that qualified teachers working on the premises all the while will be in charge of the largest nursery centres consisting of three nursery groups of 20 children each. Nursery places, will, however, also probably be provided in single groups of 20 children or less, and we envisage one qualified teacher supervising three such groups, dividing her time between them as she sees fit. Elsewhere, in a small school with small classes, a nursery group might conveniently be supervised by the head or assistant teacher of the school to which it is attached. These supervisory arrangements must be tailored to fit local circumstances but two main principles should be observed: (a) all groups should be under the ultimate authority of a qualified teacher; [page 129] the premises one of the assistants should take responsibility for the children's safety. As we suggest in Chapter 26, the most experienced assistants should be able to qualify on merit for a responsibility allowance.Teachers 334. The nursery groups need not create demands for more teachers. For the most part, they will use in different ways teachers who are already responsible for children of nursery age. In January 1965 there were nearly 7,000 infant and junior mixed and infant schools in which more than half of the classes had less than 30 pupils. Most were in the rural areas, though some, including quite large ones, were in the cities. These schools are, however, generally small and a nursery group providing places for children in the area would be correspondingly small. If accommodation is available, a school with predominantly small classes could provide supervision of a nursery group without needing any additional teacher. It might be possible, for example, for a two teacher school of 60 children to provide supervision for a nursery group of six or seven children so long as a trained nursery assistant was provided. In many schools where the classes average 30 or less the head teacher is herself in charge of a class. This need not present insuperable problems as long as the other teacher or teachers are qualified. But if other problems such as those presented by a larger number of recently arrived immigrant children are also evident, the further responsibility of a nursery group may have to be avoided. If accommodation is available possibly as many as 70,000* nursery places could be supervised without additional teachers but with additional nursery assistants. Only a careful survey by local authorities will establish the exact numbers. 335. The second way in which qualified teachers might be found for the supervision of the nursery groups would be a diversion of some of those who would otherwise be teaching infant classes. We make the case in Chapter 10 for a single date of entry in each year which will delay entry to school for some children and thus reduce the load on the total teaching force. But nursery places will be needed for children who would otherwise have places for part of the year. How many teachers this change will make it possible to employ in the nurseries cannot be estimated with any precision but at the most it might be eight thousand. In addition there were nearly 200,000 children below the statutory age in school or in nursery school in January 1965. This figure will almost certainly diminish as the pressure on places increases during the rest of the 1960s and it is equally uncertain whether places will be restored in the 1970s. We therefore assume, taking all of these sources of teachers into account, that there may be as many as ten thousand teachers to supervise the nursery groups when the single date of entry is introduced probably in the late 1970s (see Chapters 10 and 31). This number may be sufficient to supervise the majority, though not all, of the nursery places needed. *This figure is based on the number of nursery age children in the catchment areas of infant and junior mixed and infant schools in which more than half the classes have less than 30 pupils. [page 130] Nursery Assistants 336. Whilst the number of full-time equivalent places in nursery groups might be 746,000 in 1975 and 776,000 by 1979 (see Table 10 [above]) some groups will contain fewer than ten children so that a somewhat larger number of assistants than one for every ten children will be needed throughout the country. Taking this into account we estimate that the total number of nursery assistants needed will be 82,000 by 1975 and 85,000 by 1979. 337. In Chapter 26 we describe a combined scheme for the recruitment and training of nursery assistants and teachers' aides. In Chapter 31 we discuss whether, given other demands for manpower, the women needed for both schemes can be recruited. On the assumption that about three quarters of those trained will enter the schools as teachers' aides and a quarter enter the nursery groups as nursery assistants until the schools have enough aides, there might be enough trained assistants to staff the whole of our scheme for nursery education by the early 1980s. Table 37 [at the end of Chapter 31] shows the numbers entering training and service and the number of places for which they can be responsible, if training begins in 1968 and a build-up takes place systematically from then on. We consider this further in Chapter 31 where we also argue that the recruitment of teachers' aides should be regarded as being of higher priority than that of nursery assistants. 338. From paragraphs 334 to 337 it will be seen that a substantial expansion of nursery education will become possible mainly through the employment of infant teachers supported by nursery assistants. Yet we are conscious of the difficulties. Some areas may not be able to find teachers to fill their quotas even now and may have no teachers for nursery education. They would have some when the single date of entry is introduced. We hope, however, that in the educational priority areas (see Chapter 5) special efforts will be made to attract teachers. If not, provision will be patchy and some of the areas whose claims are greatest will not get nursery education. The expansion we propose is to be envisaged against the improved rates of teacher recruitment in the 1970s foreshadowed by the Secretary of State in his speech of 12 April 1966.* We have also assumed that the numbers of women who can be attracted to training as nursery assistants will increase substantially. We believe, but cannot be sure, that the estimated numbers can be recruited. If not, the rate of expansion must be slower than we suggest. The success of the scheme will depend above all on the efforts made by local education authorities. We take up in Chapter 31 the ways in which the recruitment of assistants, diversion of teachers and availability of buildings must be synchronised. Buildings 339. Much building will be necessary if all the nursery places needed are to be provided but even now there are some empty places. Since 1954 building *In his speech to the National Union of Teachers in April 1966 the Secretary of State said that, by Easter 1971, the teacher shortage in England should be no more than 8,000 and that although the raising of the school leaving age would inevitably cause a temporary setback in staffing standards a speedy recovery would be ensured through the heavy reinforcement which the schools would be receiving from the greatly expanded colleges of education. The next five years to 1976 should see recovery of all the lost ground and the elimination of oversize classes. Pressure would then still be necessary to ensure a better distribution of teachers between different parts of the system and to help the primary schools reduce the size of their classes. [page 131] programmes have had to meet the large demand for new school places as people moved from north to south and from city centre to outlying suburb. New schools provided on new housing estates have sometimes meant empty places of this kind and where the lack of amenities common to old school buildings can be put right there is the possibility of nursery groups without new buildings. We cannot, however, calculate the number or distribution of unused places which exist. Secondly, the number of children under statutory age in primary schools, including nursery classes but excluding nursery schools, totalled 175,000 in January 1965. If our short term proposals for entry to school (see Chapter 10) are adopted, more children will delay entry full-time until they are over five. The places which they will occupy during the two terms when they will attend part-time will be, to all intents and purposes, nursery places. Thirdly, if our proposal for one annual intake is accepted, the equivalent of one third of the five year old age group will be taken out of the primary schools - a further 214,000 children on present numbers, or 290,000 on the average school population expected in the 1970s. 340. Only careful surveys by local education authorities and the Department can show how many of the 776,000 places can be provided without new building. We make here an informed guess at the space that can be found through changes in admission policies and the use of places at present underused so as to complete our estimates of cost. If all under fives ceased to attend school full-time, on 1965 figures, nearly 175,000 places would be released, but we do not know how many under fives will be in school in the late 1970s. We arbitrarily assume that the number might be reduced to 100,000 because of the evidence already quoted that local education authorities are increasingly excluding under fives. Secondly, 290,000 places might be released by the introduction of the single date of entry. Thirdly, the number of places under used, including those in very small schools and small classes, might be a further 100,000. There might therefore be a theoretical maximum of nearly half a million places. But nursery groups will not contain more than 20 children whereas the spaces they will occupy have held as many as 40 children. The theoretical maximum should thus be reduced to 250,000 and we assume that the other difficulties might reduce this figure even further. The number of places might therefore range between 175,000 and 250,000. We estimate costs for the additional places to be built in Chapter 31. Conclusion 341. The timing and priorities that we consider right for nursery education are discussed more fully in Chapter 31. We emphasise, however, that unless a start, no matter how modest, is made soon, there will not be a sufficient build-up of staff for the large scale expansion to approach completion in the late 1970s. There are areas where a start can be made right away. We have already suggested in Chapter 5 that a large scale expansion should take place between 1968 and 1972 in the educational priority areas. But there will be neighbourhoods outside these areas where general social conditions, such as high flats or lack of recreational space, make nursery education essential. 342. In this chapter we have discussed the ways in which a large education reform might be put into effect. Our proposals may meet with objections. Teachers may fear that nursery groups will have too little supervision by [page 132] trained teachers but at least the young children in them will be in small groups; the adult pupil ratio will be at least one to ten and these adults will be trained. What we suggest will be far better than the sub-standard arrangements which have often been made in the past for children under five. Those responsible for the planning and staffing of primary education will know of many alternative uses for the staff and the money which will be needed - perhaps £80 million gross when the full plan Is complete. Yet we believe that what we propose will at last make possible an expansion of nursery education which will be generally welcomed. Recommendations 343. (i) There should be a large expansion of nursery education and a start should be made as soon as possible. [page 133] (xi) Until enough maintained places are available, local education authorities should be given power and be encouraged to give financial or other assistance to nursery groups run by non profit making associations which in their opinion fill a need which they cannot meet. Voluntary groups, with or without help from public funds, should be subject to inspection by local education authorities and HM Inspectorate similar to that of the maintained nurseries. 1. 'Under 5': Howe E, Conservative Political Centre, June, 1966, page 19.
[page 134] 18. Evidence submitted by Dr J Bowlby to the Council.
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