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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 174] 468. In 1962, the last year in which Ministry of Education statistics distinguished between urban and rural schools, just under two out of every five primary schools in England and Wales were rural. If the child population was proportionate to the total population as shown by the 1961 census, about one in five pupils attended a country school. According to the NUT Survey of schools (1962) about 17 per cent of rural schools had one or two classes. Most of the remainder contain three or four classes. Two class and three class schools constitute the two main groups. Most village schools provide for children from 5 to 11. School Closures 469. Affectionate accounts of village schools figure prominently in autobiographies and in descriptions of schools published in the last 20 years. Nevertheless, many are closed every year, partly as a result of shifts of population, partly by the deliberate policy of local education authorities. 470. During the period 1962 to 1965 the number of primary schools with up to 25 pupils on roll declined by 243 and the number of schools with 26 to 50 pupils was reduced by 283 (see Table 15). Closure of one teacher schools was proportionately greatest; these schools, increased in number by the removal of pupils over 11 to secondary schools, are particularly difficult to run. If the teacher is ill there may be no alternative to sending the children home and no one to see that it is done. Many of the smallest schools are in the worst buildings; the NUT Survey showed that the smaller the school, the more likely it was to have been built in the nineteenth century. Frequently, no applications may be received for headships of isolated one teacher schools. Teachers who are not outstandingly gifted find it difficult to educate more than two age groups of junior children together unless the class is very small or extra help is given. That small schools are expensive to build and to staff has been shown in the previous chapter. The evidence we have received both from teachers in small schools and most of the educational associations is that a three class school for the age range 5 to 11 is the minimum effective unit. Changing Social Conditions 471. For those living in the country, even more than for the rest of the community, change has been rapid in the last 30 years. Television has introduced new interests. London or the nearest seaside resort is often better known and more readily imagined than the county town. Mechanisation is reducing the number of farm workers, never more than a proportion of villagers, needed to work the land and it is demanding more technical ability of those who *The Central Advisory Council For Education (Wales) have, we understand, made a detailed study of problems of rural education. It contains much that is relevant to the size of rural schools and to rural education in England. Its relevance is, however, limited by the difference in rural communities between Wales and most parts of England. [page 175] remain. Though wages have gone up and much overtime can be earned seasonally, earnings lag behind those in the towns. Many villages are almost emptied of their working population during the day: public and private buses and cars take men and women to factories in the nearest towns. The drift of the young from the countryside continues. 472. Yet there are large differences from one part of the country to another and from one village to another. Many villages are near enough to urban counties to be preferred by commuters to suburban dormitories. Whole areas of the home counties come into this category. Parents expect and press for as good an education for their children in the village as they would have had in the town. Some of the most active PTAs are in commuter villages. In the true country, some villages grow larger because of housing development, the introduction of small industry, adequate shopping facilities and reasonable public transport. In others, transport is poor, no council houses are built and the young must move away to work and later to set up their own households. In some villages, only a minority of the inhabitants were born there. In others the old cohesion remains, and a proposal to close a village school may raise a storm of protest from parents and from others who have no immediate concern with the school. To close a primary school may in fact diminish a village in more senses than one and provide a further reason why young married couples will want to leave it. Yet there are great variations between villages and between regions. Some schools, especially in the North, were never integral to a village but were placed centrally for hamlets and outlying farms. Rural Schools: The Premises 473. The pioneering work of the National Society in providing schools for the villages in the nineteenth century has left a heavy legacy of problems. Though many of these schools become 'controlled' after the 1944 Act and the buildings could therefore be improved with local education authority help, progress has been held up by the priority given to secondary school reorganisation and to the provision of schools for new housing estates. In any case until reorganisation was completed and the older children transferred, improvement would have often taken up too much space. Now that this has been done improvements must rely on minor building programmes which, though increased, do not make sufficient impact. Yet there have been some remarkable achievements. The cooperation of local education authorities and the Ministry (and later, Department) of Education Development Group has resulted in the planning and building of village schools designed for the conditions of rural education and so able to serve as models for new schools and for adaptations. 474. Yet many country schools, like the older primary schools in the towns, lag behind what is tolerable, let alone what is desirable. Some schools are without facilities for physical education, either indoors or outdoors. Even though more space has been provided by the transfer of secondary pupils the infants' room is often so pokey that it will not take new furniture. There is rarely any place where teachers can withdraw from the children or talk to a parent. Storage is inadequate. Many schools still lack piped hot water and the chemical closet and the earth closet still survive. In some schools conditions are worse than at home, and training in hygiene difficult to achieve. [page 176] Staffing 475. On the whole, the uniform Burnham scale and staffing quotas have been favourable to rural schools. Yet while some counties can pick and choose others have difficulty in recruiting the teachers they want. It has already been suggested that difficulty in obtaining teachers has been one reason for the closure of one teacher schools. We have been told that the average age of the village teacher is rather higher than that of all teachers and many will retire shortly. Difficulty in appointing teachers to country schools may therefore increase. Much depends on the attractiveness of the area, on its accessibility, on the size of the village, on the provision of modernised school houses and on what is known of an authority's reputation for helping country schools. Although some authorities are deliberately increasing the number of men teachers in rural schools, others do not employ many men. Enterprising teachers who want to try fresh ideas often prefer headships in a country school with responsibility for a class, to a deputy headship or a graded post in a larger school and this is bringing new strength to some small schools. Some of these teachers live in the villages and identify themselves with it; yet as more teachers own cars, more probably live away from their work. 476. It is even more difficult to find suitable assistant teachers for small schools than heads. Unqualified supplementary teachers who have helped to staff rural schools in the past are retiring. Except in the commuter villages there are relatively few married women teachers available. Teachers are easier to recruit for villages near to towns but then they usually live in the town and the identification of the school with the village, one of the advantages often claimed for the village school is weakened. We have heard of some authorities which employ men assistants in two teacher schools, a policy which is apparently working well even though much of their work must be with infants. Traditionally the head, whether man or women, takes the older children who can more easily be left when the head is called away. Many counties have to draft teachers to remote schools in much the same way that county boroughs often staff schools in socially deprived areas. Probationers often do not stay after the end of the year, partly because of their dislike of isolation, partly because suitable lodgings are hard to find. We have heard of schools in which there is a yearly change of assistant teachers. 477. Acknowledgement must be made of the devoted work of many village school teachers. Often working alone in their schools and with few opportunities for discussion with their colleagues, sometimes heavily handicapped by their buildings, responsible for children of a wider age range than most junior school teachers think practicable, they have created schools characterised by warmth, mutual forbearance and an almost family affection. Many teachers showed great adaptability in responding to the needs of a 5 to 11 school as distinct from the all-through school to which they had been accustomed. Recent recruits to country schools have continued this tradition and, as we have seen for ourselves, have set an example for national progress in primary education, both in the flexible organisation of their schools and the excellence of their work. Children and the Schools 478. Enquiries into the measured attainment of children in rural and urban schools have tended to show lower mean attainment for country children than [page 177] for urban children. It has often been suggested that this is because the enterprising in all classes make for the towns. Yet a summary of the evidence in 1959 suggested that, when socio-economic class is taken into account, the differences between town and country children disappear (1). In villages accessible to towns where the occupational distribution of the parents is changing, the children's attainment may also be expected to change. Some country people speak less and speak more more slowly than people in town. It may be that country children have been handicapped by silence at home and that test vocabularies have been biased in favour of urban children. Certainly there is evidence that speed tests give advantage to children from town schools. Some authorities, concerned about the small proportion of village children who obtain grammar school places, have reserved some places for children from country schools. It has been found that these children have justified their places (2). Similarly an enquiry in Cambridgeshire showed that pupils from rural areas who obtained places in selective schools fulfilled their promise more consistently than those from the towns (3). 479. There are both advantages and disadvantages in the circumstances of the country school. The National Survey showed that beginners settle easily in a village school to which all their acquaintances go and whose teachers, parents, and children they almost always know. The small numbers in the school and the wide age range in classes encourage a spirit of co-operation and children quickly assimilate the established traditions of learning and behaviour. Yet the older children and particularly the abler ones may lack the stimulus of their peers. The wide age range within a class is to some teachers an incentive to individual work; to others a burden. At worst, the five year olds may begin book learning before they are ready, so that they do not disturb the others, and the older children make their way with little guidance through English 'work books' and arithmetic text books. A handful of really backward children may make no progress at all. At best, the small school provides for much hard thinking arising from genuine problems and discussion and for personal writing and art and craft of as high a quality as we have seen in any schools in England. The knowledge of children that a good village school teacher can build up is invaluable. Yet one weak teacher can destroy a child's educational opportunities and a clash of personality between a teacher and a child may be disastrous. A good head can quickly influence a small school, particularly if, as is becoming more common, a rigid class organisation is broken down and teachers pool their ideas and gifts. The immediate environment of many country schools is rich with interest and children can make visits for themselves out of school hours. Yet they may often need help from an enlightened and sensitive adult to awaken their interest in what to them is common place. It is in fact the country schools which have set the pace for the development of environmental studies. Size and Age Range of Rural Schools 480. Despite the achievements of one and two teacher schools, their difficulties and their cost, particularly in teachers, lead us to recommend that schools with an age range of 5 to 11 should usually have at least three classes, each covering two age groups. But local circumstances will make exceptions inevitable. [page 178] 481. If the age range of primary education is extended to 12, it will be difficult to provide a sufficiently challenging curriculum for the older pupils who may become, as one witness suggested, 'unwilling veterans' unless an additional teacher is appointed or substantial help is given by peripatetic teachers. If some rural schools in the area become larger, other village schools will have to be closed. 482. We are concerned about the number of five year old children who travel by bus to schools outside their villages. These children are often less ready for school at five than town children. Their mothers are unable to go with them to school or to make informal contact with their teachers and from the first, children must spend two sessions at school unless special arrangements are made for their transport. For the sake of these young children, and because we should like middle schools to be geared to the needs of pupils between 8 and 12, we should prefer a two tier system of primary education in the country as in the town. First schools serving one or two country villages might contain two or more classes of children from five to eight or nine and a nursery group; if there were only enough children for one class, the class might be regarded as an annex to a larger school and the teacher might be given the support of an aide or nursery assistant. Middle schools might be centrally placed in large villages or small country towns. 483. We have been unable to investigate whether a two tier rural reorganisation is practicable. We understand that enquiries made by three local education authorities for the Welsh Central Advisory Council for Education showed that it would be easier to organise 5 to 12 schools partly because this structure would make use of existing three class schools; a two tier plan would perpetuate or increase expensive one class schools, or annexes, as we have suggested. Yet we have received evidence from rural authorities, admittedly not based on detailed enquiry, which favours two tier schools. Much must depend on the distribution of population, the siting of villages and the amount of remodelling of rural schools which has taken place. Planning must take into account whether villages are decaying, static or growing and the possible effect of school closures on them. Where authorities find that 5 to 12 schools are the only possible pattern, the older children must not be denied the broader curriculum they would have had at the top of a middle school. Earlier transfer for exceptionally mature children at 11 or, in a two tier system, at seven or eight will be particularly important when the number of classes in rural schools is small. If schemes involve travelling for five year olds, their transition to school should be eased by the provision of part-time education even if it adds to the cost of transport. Parents must be involved in the schools and whenever possible part-time nursery groups set up in the villages. Country children who often do not have other children of their own age to play with and whose language may be stunted because of infrequent opportunities for talk with adults particularly need nursery experience but rarely get it. To some extent, these disadvantages are compensated for by the freedom and interest of their environment. We have suggested that in some instances parents' obligation to have their children educated might be satisfied by children's attendance at a nursery group. This arrangement might be particularly helpful for children who are not ready for a whole day at school away from the village. [page 179] Help for Rural Schools 484. We are impressed by the work of a local authority that has pioneered the adaptation and rebuilding of country schools. It is building a new primary school, a welfare clinic and a branch library associated with a further education centre on the site. It is considering attaching village rooms with their own cloakroom facilities and access to new primary schools as a means of associating community and school, the more necessary perhaps now that this authority is finding that it cannot retain a school in each village. Most interesting of all are the close relationships which are being developed by groups of small schools. Although heads retain responsibility for their own schools, the local education authority consults the needs of the whole group when it appoints new teachers. In one group members of staff interchange schools so that they can learn of experiments taking place, initiate new methods, and give help in matters in which they are knowledgeable both to their colleagues and to groups of children. A liaison assistant has been appointed to look after the secretarial work for the group and for individual schools. She is also responsible for a group collection of film strips, tapes, expensive books and display materials. Children visit each other's schools for team games, music making and country dancing. A minibus is available. It is intended that the managers of the schools shall have some group meetings. This organisation has developed from informal friendly relationships which have existed between the schools for many years and have been fostered by the advisory teachers whose contribution to the work of rural schools is an outstanding feature of this authority. 485. The developments in this authority point to the general needs of country schools. Among the most important are support for teachers, more contacts for country children with their contemporaries and improved buildings. Rural schools need to open up rooms to provide more space and movement and to encourage the staff, which will almost certainly include a head in charge of a class, to work as a group. New methods are also needed to preserve and improve further the cooperation between school and community which has been a strength of many village schools. 486. The number of village teachers who have been brought up in the country is dwindling partly because more people live in towns, partly because assistant teachers from town schools find promotion as heads of country schools. Care must therefore be taken to see that teachers who may work in the country know what it has to offer, what it is like to live there and have a sympathetic understanding of the rural society they serve. Some town schools are over used for teaching practice by colleges of education. Some village schools are still under used. Admittedly lodgings in villages are often difficult to obtain but students might lodge in a market town and travel by bus to a group of villages, as some already do. 487. In-service training and easy contacts between country school teachers are at least as important as initial training. Valuable help can be given by advisers and by advisory teachers. In some areas, at least, an advisory teacher comes into the schools not by right but by the staff's goodwill, and teaches as a teacher with teachers. He can fill a vacancy for a brief spell in an emergency. He can spend several days in succession in a school to support a probationary teacher who is having difficulties (as we suggest in Chapter 25); he can advise an established teacher who is modifying his methods or bring [page 180] new quality to an aspect of the curriculum on which the adviser is expert and the school lacks resources. 488. The staffs of country schools need, and respond to, arrangements to bring them into regular association with one another. The grouping of primary schools which has already been described is an effective way of bringing this about and leads naturally to links with the secondary schools to which children transfer. Some authorities find that almost all teachers attend area courses or conferences. Country teachers also need to meet teachers from a wider range of schools. One authority which has given much attention to in-service training has developed a 'junior workshop' or group of junior teachers within the county. It holds general meetings on topics of common interest and subdivides into study groups for teachers in small schools and those who are particularly concerned with certain aspects of the curriculum. One of the liveliest of these groups is concerned with environmental studies. It is hoped to establish a centre for environmental studies for primary school children which would give children a short experience of residential education and could be used to train teachers in the use of the environment in the education of primary children. 489. If heads who are in charge of classes are to give sufficient guidance to their staff and to make contact with parents, they need, as suggested in Chapter 24, part-time teaching help and ancillary assistance. Peripatetic teachers can be helpful in new subjects, such as French, and established subjects such as music. With assistance from educational psychologists they can help in the education of the most backward children. Teachers in country schools who have to provide for children in more than one age group and children from remote rural areas can make particularly good use of such aids as radio, television, tape recorders, film strips and programmed learning. The county libraries have already done much to enrich the education of country children; museum and picture loan services might be provided more generally than at present. 490. To help the teachers is to help the children. There are advantages in the country school of the flexible forms of organisation which are described in more detail in Chapter 20. We commend regular visits by children to nearby primary schools and occasional visits or interchanges with town schools. It has been brought to our attention by several witnesses that country children, particularly those from scattered communities, may lack companionship and find little to do after school hours. There is a place for the community school in the country no less than in the town. In one school, 81 children out of 98 eligible attended clubs which the school provided for an hour each evening. The transition from a small country primary school to a centrally situated secondary school can be a considerable strain for the children. We refer in Chapter 12 to a scheme by which primary school children in their last year attend once a week the secondary school to which they will transfer. This arrangement could enrich the curriculum for children in a 5 to 12 school and would fit well with the suggested grouping of primary schools. 491. Changes in village life make it necessary to organise what has hitherto been a largely informal association of the village school master with the parents of his pupils. Certainly when a village school has to be shut and a school serves more than one village, it would be helpful for the head to visit regularly each village in order to meet parents. As many villages become less [page 181] cohesive, more formal procedures including PTAs may become necessary even in a school which serves only one village. The closer the relations between the village and the school, the easier it will become to solve the school's many problems: to find lodgings for an assistant teacher; to build the swimming pool without which village children would have no opportunity to learn to swim; to provide supervision for out of school activities and, occasionally, to find sources to satisfy a child with a special interest about which no one on the school staff is knowledgeable. Parental encouragement, based on parental knowledge of what the school is trying to do, is as important for country as for town children. Recommendations 492. (i) Schools with an age range of 5 to 11 should usually have at least three classes, each covering two age groups. 1. Barr F 'Urban and Rural Differences - Ability and Attainment'. Educational Research, Vol. 1, 1959, page 59.
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