Plowden (1967)

Notes on the text

Volume 1

Preliminary pages Foreword, Membership, Contents
Lists Tables, Diagrams and Photographs

Part 1 Introduction
Chapter 1 Introduction

Part 2 The growth of the child
Chapter 2 The children: their growth and development

Part 3 The home, school and neighbourhood
Chapter 3 The children and their environment
Chapter 4 Participation by parents
Chapter 5 Educational Priority Areas
Chapter 6 Children of immigrants
Chapter 7 The health and social services and the school child

Part 4 The structure of primary education
Chapter 8 Primary education in the 1960s: its organisation and effectiveness
Chapter 9 Providing for children before compulsory education
Chapter 10 The ages and stages of primary education
Chapter 11 Selection for secondary education
Chapter 12 Continuity and consistency between the stages of education
Chapter 13 The size of primary schools
Chapter 14 Education in rural areas

Part 5 The children in the schools: curriculum and internal organisation
Chapter 15 The aims of primary education
Chapter 16 Children learning in school
Chapter 17 Aspects of the curriculum
Chapter 18 Aids to learning and to teaching
Chapter 19 The child in the school community
Chapter 20 How primary schools are organised
Chapter 21 Handicapped children in ordinary schools
Chapter 22 The education of gifted children

Part 6 The adults in the schools
Introduction the role of the teacher
Chapter 23 The staffing of schools
Chapter 24 The Deployment of Staff
Chapter 25 The training of primary school teachers
Chapter 26 The training of nursery assistants and teachers' aides

Part 7 Independent schools
Chapter 27 Independent primary schools

Part 8 Primary school buildings and equipment; status; and research
Chapter 28 Primary school buildings and equipment
Chapter 29 The status and government of primary education
Chapter 30 Research, innovation and the dissemination of information

Part 9 Conclusions and recommendations
Chapter 31 The costs and priorities of our recommendations
Chapter 32 Recommendations and conclusions

Notes of reservation
Annex A A questionnaire to witnesses
Annex B List of witnesses
Annex C Visits made
Glossary
Index

Volume 2

Research and Surveys

Articles

about Plowden

The Plowden Report (1967)
Children and their Primary Schools

A Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England)

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1967
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Volume 1 Part VI
Introduction: The role of the teacher
[pages 311 - 312]

873. In every section of our report we have been forced back to the teacher's role and its importance. A superficial conclusion from the National Survey might be that schools and teachers are less crucial to children's education than was formerly thought. Our inference is that teachers must enlarge their endeavours and enlist parents' interest to a greater extent in their children's education. When children are materially, intellectually or emotionally deprived, teachers must strive to serve as substitutes for parents, to make children feel that they matter, however little they are able to respond, and however unattractive they may appear to be. Much is asked of teachers in these circumstances: to be patient when children develop slowly or regress, to provide experience rather than short cuts to it, to care tenderly for individual children and yet retain sufficient detachment to assess what they are achieving and how they are developing.

874. Our study of children's development has emphasised the importance of maturation to learning. The corollary is not to make the teacher's role passive but to underline the importance of diagnosing children's needs and potentialities. Teachers face the difficult task of assessing individual differences, appraising effort in relation to them and avoiding the twin pitfalls of demanding too much or expecting too little. Teachers must support apathetic children until they gain a momentum of their own. They must challenge and inspire children who are too readily satisfied and, on occasion, force independence on those children who wait to be prompted. They must sometimes recognise a child as being more gifted than they are themselves and be perceptive enough to provide through books or by invoking the help of another teacher the stimulus which they cannot themselves furnish.

875. Similarly, as we have surveyed the way children learn, the demands made on teachers have appeared frighteningly high. The primary school curriculum must touch on the scientific and mathematical knowledge on which the modern world depends and in which children are particularly interested. The teacher who used to give set lessons could manage on a little knowledge and use it over and over again. Far more knowledge, both about subject matter and about how children learn, is called for in teachers who have continually to exercise judgement, to 'think on their feet', to keep in mind long term and short term objectives. They have to select an environment which will encourage curiosity, to focus attention on enquiries which will lead to useful discovery, to collaborate with children, to lead from behind. That instruction is going on throughout periods of free play has been well demonstrated by a recent enquiry into the role of the teacher in the infant and nursery school (1).

876. To a unique extent English teachers have the responsibility and the spur of freedom. They adapt schemes of work to the children for whom they are responsible and in an increasing number of schools they plan how the day will be spent. It has long been characteristic of the English educational system that the teacher has been expected to carry the burden of teaching by example as well as by precept. He is expected to be a good man and to influence children more by what he is than by what he knows or by his methods. 'First he wrought and afterwards he taught' is particularly relevant to the teacher of young children and extends to every facet of education. Teachers cannot escape the knowledge that children will catch values and attitudes far more from what teachers do than what they say. Unless they are courteous, they cannot expect courtesy from children: when teachers are eager to learn and turn readily to observation and to books, their pupils are likely to do the same. There is little hope that children will come to an appreciation of order and beauty either in nature or what is man-made, unless these qualities are enjoyed by their teachers and exemplified in the schools.

877. So broad and ill defined a role is almost bound to be at one and the same time satisfying and yet over demanding. The teacher's work can never be seen to be completed. Its outcome is usually undramatic and success can never be finally or tidily assessed. The more sensitive and conscientious teachers are, the more they will realise that some failures are inevitable and the greater the danger that they will become so absorbed in their work with children that they will deny themselves an adult life of their own and thus dry up the sources of the help they give to children. The deference and respect that children show to good teachers may to some extent isolate them from other adults, especially since, with justification, every parent claims to know something of the upbringing of children and many fail to see the subtleties of the teacher's task.

878. There can be no doubt of the importance or the exacting nature of the teacher's task. On the teachers, on their skills and on their good will, far more than on organisation or on buildings, the future of education depends. Yet we write at a time when, despite all the efforts of the colleges of education, the primary schools are 20,000 teachers short of the number needed on present staffing standards.

Reference
1. Gardner DEM and Cass JM (1965) The Role of the Teacher in the Infant School Pergamon.