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Plowden (1967) Notes on the text Volume 1 Preliminary pages Foreword, Membership, Contents
Part 1 Introduction
Part 2 The growth of the child
Part 3 The home, school and neighbourhood
Part 4 The structure of primary education
Part 5 The children in the schools: curriculum and internal organisation
Part 6 The adults in the schools
Part 7 Independent schools
Part 8 Primary school buildings and equipment; status; and research
Part 9 Conclusions and recommendations
Notes of reservation
Research and Surveys about Plowden |
The Plowden Report (1967)
A Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1967
Volume 1 Chapter 16
Towards freedom of curriculum
509. During the 46 years that elapsed between the abolition of payment by results and the abolition of the Code, the use made by teachers of their growing freedom varied considerably. The force of tradition and of the inherent conservatism of all teaching professions made for a slow rate of change. The requirements of selection examinations for grammar schools also exercised a strong influence towards uniformity. In the earlier part of the period, too, HM Inspectors, who for the previous thirty years had been examiners, were probably restraining influences on innovation, though as time went on they tended increasingly to be agents of experiment and change. A minority of teachers, particularly in the infant schools, responded eagerly to freedom. The infant schools themselves were influenced by ideas on nursery education partly because training for nursery work was often given in colleges which specialised in infant education. 510. A considerable body of liberal thinking on the education of children was available to teachers. Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Whitehead, Dewey, Montessori and Rachel Macmillan, to mention only a few, had all written on lines that encouraged change and innovation. Yet it may be doubted whether the direct influence of these or of any other writers was great. It was rare to find teachers who had given much time to the study of educational theory, even in their training college days. Perhaps the strongest influence was that of Froebel, mediated through the Froebel training colleges which bore his name. 511. In some infant schools, a 'blocked' timetable began to take the place of a day fragmented into 15 or 20 minute periods, which was as long as little children could tolerate when most of the instruction was oral. It became quite common to give two periods each day to physical activity and, in the more enlightened schools, the distinction between physical education and play was blurred. In some schools, the 'occupations', which owed their place in the curriculum to Froebel but were usually very different from what he had intended, were superseded by dramatic play and large scale construction. There was an increased tendency to allocate blocks of time to the three Rs and within these periods to provide, as is described in this and the next chapter, for group and individual work. 512. For children between the ages of 8 and 11 experiments were mainly in method, class organisation and use of materials. The curriculum, in the narrow sense of the subjects studied, remained almost unchanged. It included Scripture, English, arithmetic, history, geography, art, craft, music, nature study and physical training. It was rare in the period 1898 to 1944 to find a primary school in which any of these subjects was omitted and any other included. But there was, especially after the publication of the Consultative Committee's 1931 Report, much variety of content and approach. English was beginning to involve a freer use of composition, and drama was making an appearance. The first signs of a change in the conception of mathematical learning were there for those who searched. The boundaries of history and geography were sometimes blurred and something called environmental studies - or social studies - which embraced them both, was beginning to be talked of. Art was already moving rapidly away from the dreary pencil drawing that had been universal. Craft was still limited and formal. A beginning was being made in the use of musical instruments. Nature study increasingly took place outside the classroom and physical education advanced greatly when the old conception of drill was swept away by the publication in 1933 of the Board of Education's new syllabus. Here and there schools were making a much more radical approach to education than this would indicate. The freedom was genuine, even if it was seized a little gingerly. 513. During the war, when there was a growing consciousness of social problems, much thought was given to the hitherto largely neglected report of 1931 and to the writings of educationalists such as Susan Isaacs. Despite overcrowding and large classes, many post war primary schools did much to enlarge children's experience and involve them more actively in the learning process - the main themes of the 1931 Report. This was a period when a great many descriptive books, of considerable practical help to teachers, were being written about both infant and junior schools, and, for the first time, a sizeable number of junior schools, backed by HM Inspectors and local inspectors, began to work on lines similar to those already common in infant schools. For a brief time 'activity' and child-centred education became dangerously fashionable and misunderstandings on the part of the camp followers endangered the progress made by the pioneers. The misunderstandings were never as widespread in the schools as might have been supposed by reading the press and certainly did not outweigh the gains which were especially notable in the English subjects. Then as now, the schools which continued on traditional lines to emphasise instruction exceeded the number of those which erred by excess of innovation. In any case, correctives came in an emphasis on quality in the learning experiences provided for children and on the positive function of the teacher. 514. Among the many influences which have eased the task of the teachers wishing to experiment have been the new school buildings in which a third of primary school children are housed, more generous equipment allowances, and increased in-service training. 515. Recently, there have been changes in the curriculum which must be attributed to influences sufficiently distinct from those just mentioned to require separate treatment. A second language, in almost every case French, has been introduced in a substantial number of primary schools. The teaching of mathematics is undergoing a radical change and a wider field of science is replacing nature study. The cause of these changes will be discussed in detail in Chapter 17. All that need be said here is that these changes seem to be taking place unusually rapidly, often because of the in-service training which has been encouraged and sometimes planned by the Department in concert with other bodies. 516. Looked at from any point of view, the changes that have taken place between 1898 and the fifties and sixties have been striking, but they have been largely uncoordinated, except perhaps by in-service training. It was argued that the establishment of some central organisation could accelerate the process of change and co-ordinate and evaluate whatever changes were taking place. Such thoughts as these led to the setting up in 1964 of the Schools Council for the Curriculum and Examinations. 517. The organisation and operation of the Council have been fully described in its own publications. The Council is a consortium of bodies concerned with education, the teachers' organisations, the local education authorities, the universities and colleges of education, the Department being one member among others. One of its main functions is to enlist teachers' help in curricular development. The Council's activities in the short time they have been established have been principally concerned with secondary education, save for their interest in the Nuffield primary school projects in French, science and mathematics. The Council have a great number of subject subcommittees as well as steering committees concerned with the different stages of education, including one for primary education. Research on children's learning
519. Research into the ways in which children learn has produced, broadly, two interpretations of the learning process. One, which is still dominant in the United States and is associated with the names of Thorndike, Hull, Pavlov and Skinner among others, is essentially behaviourist. It is concerned with simple and complex operant conditioning, the place of reinforcement in learning, habit formation and the measurement of various kinds of stimulus-response behaviour. Much of the more recent work derives from animal studies and its main relevance is to motor learning, though some work has been done on the learning of information, concepts and skills by children and adults. It does not offer very much direct help to teachers since, for the most part, the motives and sequence of children's learning are too complicated for analysis in terms of simple models. A recent review of programmed learning (1) suggests that even simple segments of learning do not always conform closely to models of learning theory such as Skinner's. It is in a whole situation with a history behind it that a child or adult learns. Success in using a machine may be due as much to relaxation from anxiety or to a feeling of self-importance as to the small steps used in linear programming on the Skinner system. Most teachers of young children have seen the value of a gradual build-up of vocabulary in the teaching of reading. But they have also had evidence of the rapid strides that children can make when a particular book holds such interest for them that they are determined to read it quickly. 520. Some of the experiments of the behaviourists confirm that prolonged periods of routine practice in, for example, computation or handwriting reduce rather than improve accuracy. This is a lesson which is particularly relevant to schools working on traditional lines. 521. A second school of research, which is dominant in Great Britain and apparently gaining ground in the United States, is associated with the names of Baldwin, Isaacs, Luria, Bruner, and in particular Jean Piaget. This school is interested in discovering the ground plan of the growth of intellectual powers and the order in which they are acquired. One of its most important conclusions is that the great majority of primary school children can only learn efficiently from concrete situations, as lived or described. From these situations, children acquire concepts in every area of the curriculum. According to Piaget, all learning calls for organisation of material or of behaviour on the part of the learner, and the learner has to adapt himself and is altered in the process. Learning takes place through a continuous process of interaction between the learner and his environment, which results in the building up of consistent and stable patterns of behaviour, physical and mental. Each new experience reorganises, however slightly, the structure of the mind and contributes to the child's world picture. 522. Piaget's thought, which influenced the 1931 Report and our own, is not easy to understand. It is almost impossible to express in other than technical terms. Although he is not primarily an educationalist, his work has important implications for teachers. His observations of the sequence in the development of children's concepts are being tested on samples of children in many countries and these tests are tending to confirm his main findings. Much more investigation is needed on the extent to which the school environment and the guidance and teaching provided by teachers can accelerate children's progress. The effect of social expectations on the way children learn also calls for study. Nevertheless Piaget's explanations appear to most educationalists in this country to fit the observed facts of children's learning more satisfactorily than any other. It is in accord with previous research by genetic psychologists and with what is generally regarded as the most effective primary school practice, as it has been worked out empirically. The main implications of that practice are described in the following paragraphs and, where relevant, reference is made to the support given them by the Piagetian school of thought. Aspects of children's learning
524. From infancy, children investigate the material world. Their interest is not wholly scientific but arises from a desire to control or use the things about them. Pleasure in 'being a cause' seems to permeate children's earliest contact with materials. To destroy and construct involves learning the properties of things and in this way children can build up concepts of weight, height, size, volume and texture. 525. Primitive materials such as sand, water, clay and wood attract young children and evoke concentration and inventiveness. Children are also stimulated by natural or manufactured materials of many shapes, colours and textures. Their imagination seizes on particular facets of objects and leads them to invent as well as to create. All kinds of causal connections are discovered, illustrated and used. Children also use objects as symbols for things, feelings and experiences, for which they may lack words. A small girl may use a piece of material in slightly different ways to make herself into a bride, a queen or a nurse. When teachers enter into the play activity of children, they can help by watching the connections and relationships which children are making and by introducing, almost incidentally, the words for the concepts and feelings that are being expressed. Some symbolism is unconscious and may be the means by which children come to terms with actions or thoughts which are not acceptable to adults or are too frightening for the children themselves. In play are the roots of drama, expressive movement and art. In this way too children learn to understand other people. The earliest play of this kind probably emerges from play with materials. A child playing with a toy aeroplane can be seen to take the role of both the aeroplane and the pilot apparently simultaneously. All the important people of his world figure in this play: he imitates, he becomes, he symbolises. He works off aggression or compensates himself for lack of love by 'being' one or other of the people who impinge on his life. By acting as he conceives they do, he tries to understand them. Since children tend to have inflexible roles thrust on them by adults, they need opportunities to explore different roles and to make a freer choice of their own. Early exploration of the actions, motives and feelings of themselves and of others is likely to be an important factor in the ability to form right relationships, which in its turn seems to be a crucial element in mental health. The difficulties of blind and deaf children whose play is restricted show how much play enriches the lives of ordinary children. Adults can help children in this form of play and in their social development by references to the thoughts, feelings and needs of other people. Through stories told to them, children enter into different ways of behaving and of looking at the world, and play new parts. 526. Just as adults relive experience in thought or words, so children play over and over the important happenings of their lives. The repetition is usually selective. Children who re-enact a painful scene repeatedly are not doing it to preserve the pain but to make it bearable and understandable. They incorporate those parts of the difficult situation which are endurable and add others as their courage and confidence grows. This is one of the ways in which they bring under control the feelings of frustration which must be experienced by those who are dependent on the will and love of adults. This kind of play can preserve self esteem by reducing unpleasant experiences to size, and reinforce confidence by dwelling on success. 527. Much of children's play is 'cultural' play as opposed to the 'natural' play of animals which mainly practices physical and survival skills. It often needs adult participation so that cultural facts and their significance can be communicated to children. The introduction into the classroom of objects for hospital play provides opportunities for coming to terms with one of the most common fears. Similarly the arrival of a new baby in the family, the death of someone important to the child, the invention of space rockets or new weapons may all call for the provision of materials for dramatic play which will help children to give expression to their feelings as a preliminary to understanding and controlling them. Sensitivity and observation are called for rather than intervention from the teacher. The knowledge of children gained from 'active' observation is invaluable to teachers. It gives common ground for conversation and exchange of ideas which it is among the most important duties of teachers to initiate and foster. 528. A child's play at any given moment contains many elements. The layers of meaning may include a highly conscious organisation of the environment, exploration of physical and social relationships and an expression of the deepest levels of fantasy. Wide ranging and satisfying play is a means of learning, a powerful stimulus to learning and a way to free learning from distortion by the emotions. Several writers have recently emphasised the importance of a period of play and exploration in new learning as, for example, in mathematics and science. (2, 3) Adults as well as children approach new learning in this way. 529. The child is the agent in his own learning. This was the message of the often quoted comment from the 1931 Report: 'The curriculum is to be thought of in terms of activity and experience rather than of knowledge to be acquired and facts to be stored'. Read in isolation, the passage has sometimes been taken to imply that children could not learn from imaginative experience and that activity and experience did not lead to the acquisition of knowledge. The context makes it plain that the actual implication is almost the opposite of this. It is that activity and experience, both physical and mental, are often the best means of gaining knowledge and acquiring facts. This is more generally recognised today but still needs to be said. We certainly would not wish to undervalue knowledge and facts, but facts are best retained when they are used and understood, when right attitudes to learning are created, when children learn to learn. Instruction in many primary schools continues to bewilder children because it outruns their experience. Even in infant schools, where innovation has gone furthest, time is sometimes wasted in teaching written 'sums' before children are able to understand what they are doing. The NCDS Survey (Appendix 10) shows that 17 per cent of children start doing sums in infant schools before the age of five and a half. 530. The intense interest shown by young children in the world about them, their powers of concentration on whatever is occupying their attention, or serving their immediate purposes, are apparent to both teachers and parents. Skills of reading and writing or the techniques used in art and craft can best be taught when the need for them is evident to children. A child who has no immediate incentive for learning to read is unlikely to succeed because of warnings about the disadvantages of illiteracy in adult life. There is, therefore, good reason for allowing young children to choose within a carefully prepared environment in which choices and interest are supported by their teachers, who will have in mind the potentialities for further learning. Piaget's observations support the belief that children have a natural urge to explore and discover, that they find pleasure in satisfying it and that it is therefore self-perpetuating. When children are learning new patterns of behaviour or new concepts, they tend both to practise them spontaneously and to seek out relevant experience, as can be seen from the way they acquire skills in movement. It takes much longer than teachers have previously realised for children to master through experience new concepts or new levels of complex concepts. When understanding has been achieved, consolidation should follow. At this stage children profit from various types of practice devised by their teachers, and from direct instruction. 531. Children will of course vary in the degree of interest that they show and their urge to learn will be strengthened or weakened, as we have suggested in Chapter 3, by the attitudes of parents, teachers and others with whom they identify themselves. Apathy may result when parents show no interest, clamp down on children's curiosity and enterprise, tell them constantly not to touch and do not answer their questions. Children can also learn to be passive from a teacher who allows them little scope in managing their own affairs and in learning. A teacher who relies only on instruction, who forestalls children's questions or who answers them too quickly, instead of asking the further questions which will set children on the way to their own solution, will disincline children to learn. (4) A new teacher with time and patience can usually help children who have learnt from their teachers to be too dependent. Those who have been deprived at home need more than that. Their self-confidence can only be restored by affection, stability and order. They must have special attention from adults who can discover, by observing their responses, what experiences awaken interest, and can seize on them to reinforce the desire to learn. 532. External incentives such as marks and stars, and other rewards and punishments, influence children's learning mainly by evoking or representing parents' or teachers' approval. Although children vary temperamentally in their response to rewards and punishments, positive incentives are generally more effective than punishment, and neither is as damaging as neglect. But the children who most need the incentive of good marks are least likely to gain them, even when, as in many primary schools, they are given for effort rather than for achievement. In any case, one of the main educational tasks of the primary school is to build on and strengthen children's intrinsic interest in learning and lead them to learn for themselves rather than from fear of disapproval or desire for praise. 533. Learning is a continuous process from birth. The teacher's task is to provide an environment and opportunities which are sufficiently challenging for children and yet not so difficult as to be outside their reach. There has to be the right mixture of the familiar and the novel, the right match to the stage of learning the child has reached. If the material is too familiar or the learning skills too easy, children will become inattentive and bored. If too great maturity is demanded of them, they fall back on half remembered formulae and become concerned only to give the reply the teacher wants. Children can think and form concepts, so long as they work at their own level, and are not made to feel that they are failures. 534. Teachers must rely both on their general knowledge of child development and on detailed observation of individual children for matching their demands to children's stages of development. This concept of 'readiness' was first applied to reading. It has sometimes been thought of in too negative a way. Children can, as we indicate in Chapter 17, be led to want to read provided that they are sufficiently mature. Learning can be undertaken too late as well as too early. Piaget's work can help teachers in diagnosing children's readiness in mathematics, and gives some pointers as to how it can be encouraged. 535. At every stage of learning children need rich and varied materials and situations, though the pace at which they should be introduced may vary according to the children. If children are limited in materials, they tend to solve problems in isolation and fail to see their relevance to other similar situations. This stands out particularly clearly in young children's learning of mathematics. Similarly, children need to accumulate much experience of human behaviour before they can develop moral concepts. If teachers or parents are inconsistent in their attitudes or contradict by their behaviour what they preach, it becomes difficult for children to develop stable and mature concepts. Verbal explanation, in advance of understanding based on experience, may be an obstacle to learning, and children's knowledge of the right words may conceal from teachers their lack of understanding. Yet it is inevitable that children will pick up words which outstrip their understanding. Discussion with other children and with adults is one of the principal ways in which children check their concepts against those of others and build up an objective view of reality. There is every justification for the conversation which is a characteristic feature of the contemporary primary school. One of the most important responsibilities of teachers is to help children to see order and pattern in experience, and to extend their ideas by analogies and by the provision of suitable vocabulary. Rigid division of the curriculum into subjects tends to interrupt children's trains of thought and of interest and to hinder them from realising the common elements in problem solving. These are among the many reasons why some work, at least, should cut across subject divisions at all stages in the primary school. Some practical implications The timetable
537. These changes represent a revolution from the type of timetable implied by the forms completed by schools for local education authorities until quite recently. Heads were expected to show exactly what each class was doing during every minute of the week and to provide a summary showing the total number of minutes to be spent on each subject. In extreme cases, the curriculum was divided into spelling, dictation, grammar, exercises, composition, recitation, reading, handwriting, tables and mental arithmetic. It is obvious that this arrangement was not suited to what was known of the nature of children, of the classification of subject matter, or of the art of teaching. Children's interest varies in length according to personality, age and circumstances, and it is folly either to interrupt it when it is intense, or to flog it when it has declined. The teacher can best judge when to make a change and the moment of change may not be the same for each child in the class. In many schools, as we have said, children plan much of their work. Yet the teacher must constantly ensure a balance within the day or week both for the class and for individuals. He must see that time is profitably spent and give guidance on its use. In the last resort, the teacher's relationship with his pupils, his openness to their suggestions and their trust in him are far more important than the nominal degree of freedom in the time table. Flexibility in the curriculum
539. There is little place for the type of scheme which sets down exactly what ground should be covered and what skill should be acquired by each class in the school. Yet to put nothing in its place may be to leave some teachers prisoners of tradition and to make difficulties for newcomers to a staff who are left to pick up, little by little, the ethos of a school. The best solution seems to be to provide brief schemes for the school as a whole: outlines of aims in various areas of the curriculum, the sequence of development which can be expected in children and the methods through which work can be soundly based and progress accelerated. It is also useful to have a record of experiences, topics, books, poems and music which have been found to succeed with children of different ages, and for attention to be drawn to notable experimental work. In good schools, schemes are often subject to a process of accretion which may make them so long that few teachers have time to read them. It is better for them to be sifted and revised, for matter to be dropped as well as added. Individual members of staff, with such help as the head and others can give, will need to plan in more detail the work of their particular classes. Often it will develop in an unexpected direction. A brief report on the topics, literature and so forth which have absorbed children during the course of the year will be necessary for teachers who take them later in their school career. 540. The idea of flexibility has found expression in a number of practices, all of them designed to make good use of the interest and curiosity of children, to minimise the notion of subject matter being rigidly compartmental, and to allow the teacher to adopt a consultative, guiding, stimulating role rather than a purely didactic one. The oldest of these methods is the 'project'. Some topic, such as 'transport' is chosen, ideally by the children, but frequently by the teacher. The topic cuts across the boundaries of subjects and is treated as its nature requires without reference to subjects as such. At its best the method leads to the use of books of reference, to individual work and to active participation in learning. Unfortunately it is no guarantee of this and the appearance of text books of projects, which achieved at one time considerable popularity, is proof of how completely a good idea can be misunderstood. 541. A variation on the project, originally associated with the infant school but often better suited to older children, is the 'centre of interest'. It begins with a topic which is of such inherent interest and variety as to make it possible and reasonable to make much of the work of the class revolve round it for a period of a week, a month or a term or even longer. Experience has shown that it is artificial to try to link most of the work of a class to one centre of interest. It has become more common to have several interests - topic is now the usual word - going at once. Much of the work may be individual, falling under broad subject headings. One topic for the time being can involve both group and class interest, and may splinter off into all kinds of individual work. 542. When a class of seven year olds notice the birds that come to the bird table outside the classroom window, they may decide, after discussion with their teacher, to make their own aviary. They will set to with a will and paint the birds in flight, make models of them in clay or papier mache, write stories and poems about them and look up reference books to find out more about their habits. Children are not assimilating inert ideas but are wholly involved in thinking, feeling and doing. The slow and the bright share a common experience and each takes from it what he can at his own level. There is no attempt to put reading and writing into separate compartments; both serve a wider purpose, and artificial barriers do not fragment the learning experience. A top junior class became interested in the problem of measuring the area of an awkwardly shaped field at the back of the school. The problem stimulated much learning about surveying and triangles. From surveying, interest passed to navigation; for the more difficult aspects of the work, cooperation between members of staff as well as pupils was needed. For one boy, the work on navigation took the form of a story of encounters of pirate ships and men-of-war and involved a great deal of calculation, history, geography and English. Integration is not only a question of allowing time for interests which do not fit under subject headings; it is as much a matter of seeing the different dimensions of subject work and of using the forms of observation and communication which are most suitable to a given sequence of learning. Use of the environment
544. Teachers in town schools can make use of railways and other transport systems, and the local shops and factories, all of which can provide suitable material. Building sites are almost ubiquitous and can provide an approach to geography, mathematics and science. We have heard of children doing 'traffic counts', discovering from shop keepers the source of their goods and even, in one case, exploring unofficially the sewage system of their area. Museums, geared to children's interests, may also be within reach and are becoming ready to let children handle as well as look, and to lend to schools some of the surplus stock which is otherwise often stored away in basements. It may be well to look a little at this approach as it can work out in a favourable environment. A group of HMIs working in a division in which some particularly good work is to be found, write as follows: 'The newer methods start with the direct impact of the environment on the child and the child's individual response to it. The results are unpredictable, but extremely worthwhile. The teacher has to be prepared to follow up the personal interests of the children who, either singly, or in groups, follow divergent paths of discovery. Books of reference, maps, enquiries of local officials, museums, archives, elderly residents in the area are all called upon to give the information needed to complete the picture that the child is seeking to construct. When this enthusiasm is unleashed in a class, the timetable may even be dispensed with, as the resulting occupations may easily cover mathematics, geology, astronomy, history, navigation, religious instruction, literature, art and craft. The teacher needs perception to appreciate the value that can be gained from this method of working, and he needs also energy to keep up with the children's demands.' 545. Another possibility is to take children out of their own environment into a contrasting one, either for the day or for a longer period. This of course applies as much to rural children visiting towns as to urban children visiting the countryside. Such visits, carefully prepared for and not just sightseeing, are generally used as the culmination of an interest or interests. They would often serve better as starting points. For day visits, when the school situation makes it possible, those places are best which are near enough for children to visit and to revisit, individually, in groups or as a class when new questions arise. There is then a strong incentive for them to look closely at the objects which have made a further visit necessary. 546. In one northern city a school, well situated in a park on the outskirts of the city, is being used for a fortnight at a time by children from the central slum areas. The school has a small resident staff and is well equipped. Since the visiting children's own teachers accompany them, they can be taught in small groups of 15. During the summer months the school day is extended into the evening so that the children, who are conveyed by buses, can gain the maximum from their experiences. 547. Authorities can help schools, as some indeed do, by providing hutted camps and other residential centres which do much for children socially as well as educationally. Useful experiments have also been tried in linking country and urban schools and arranging for exchange visits. Expeditions too far afield are to be avoided, as they are generally speaking pure sightseeing tours. We have considerable doubts about overseas expeditions for primary school children. 548. A third possibility, which is open to all schools, is to make the school environment itself as rich as possible. Nearly all children are interested in living forms, whether they be animal or plants. Some acquaintance with them is an essential part of being educated. To care for living creatures offers an emotional outlet to some children and demands discipline from all. However rich the locality, emphasis must always be put on the school itself, which is an environment contrived for children's learning. Discovery
550. Free and sometimes indiscriminate use of words such as discovery has led some critics to the view that English primary education needs to be more firmly based on closely argued educational theory. Nevertheless great advances appear to have been made without such theory and research has still a long way to go before it can make a marked contribution. At many points even so fruitful an approach as that of Piaget needs further verification. What is immediately needed is that teachers should bring to bear on their day to day problems astringent intellectual scrutiny. Yet all good teachers must work intuitively and be sensitive to the emotive and imaginative needs of their children. Teaching is an art and, as long as that with all its implications is firmly grasped, it will not be harmed by intellectual stiffening. Evaluation of children's progress
552. We have already suggested that surveys of the quality of primary schools should be made by HM Inspectorate at regular intervals. We also think that there should be recurring national surveys of attainment similar to that undertaken in reading by the Department of Education and those carried out by the NFER in reading and mathematics. 553. In this chapter, and in Part V as a whole, we describe how children learn and make broad suggestions for the curriculum and organisation of primary schools. Our views derive from evidence given to us and our own observations of good practice in the schools. At some points research supports strongly our emphasis on active learning. But many problems remain unresolved and we have, therefore, recommended further enquiry into child development and the results of new methods. We endorse the trend towards individual and active learning and 'learning by acquaintance', and should like many more schools to be more deeply influenced by it. Yet we certainly do not deny the value of 'learning by description' or the need for practice of skills and consolidation of knowledge. This part of our Report should be read in conjunction with Part IV where we discuss the teacher's responsibility for ensuring that what children learn is worth learning. At the extremes of the ability range, as we have said in other chapters, there will always be children who need special help. Not enough is known about how far, apart from variations in ability, children differ according to temperament in the way they learn. Even as children differ so do teachers. They must select those of our suggestions which their knowledge and skill enable them to put into practice in the circumstances of their schools. Recommendations
(ii) Primary schools should hear from secondary schools how their children compare over a period with children from other schools. References
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