Plowden (1967)

Notes on the text

Volume 1

(page numbers in brackets)

Preliminary pages (i-xxii)
Foreword, Membership, Contents

Part 1 Introduction
Chapter 1 (1-3)
Introduction

Part 2 The growth of the child
Chapter 2 (7-26)
The children: their growth and development

Part 3 The home, school and neighbourhood
Chapter 3 (29-36)
The children and their environment
Chapter 4 (37-49)
Participation by parents
Chapter 5 (50-68)
Educational Priority Areas
Chapter 6 (69-74)
Children of immigrants
Chapter 7 (75-94)
The health and social services and the school child

Part 4 The structure of primary education
Chapter 8 (97-115)
Primary education in the 1960s: its organisation and effectiveness
Chapter 9 (116-134)
Providing for children before compulsory education
Chapter 10 (135-152)
The ages and stages of primary education
Chapter 11 (153-157)
Selection for secondary education
Chapter 12 (158-166)
Continuity and consistency between the stages of education
Chapter 13 (167-173)
The size of primary schools
Chapter 14 (174-181)
Education in rural areas

Part 5 The children in the schools: curriculum and internal organisation
Chapter 15 (185-188)
The aims of primary education
Chapter 16 (189-202)
Children learning in school
Chapter 17 (203-261)
Aspects of the curriculum
Chapter 18 (262-265)
Aids to learning and to teaching
Chapter 19 (266-272)
The child in the school community
Chapter 20 (273-295)
How primary schools are organised
Chapter 21 (296-304)
Handicapped children in ordinary schools
Chapter 22 (305-308)
The education of gifted children

Part 6 The adults in the schools
Introduction (311-312)
The role of the teacher
Chapter 23 (313-323)
The staffing of schools
Chapter 24 (324-338)
The deployment of staff
Chapter 25 (339-367)
The training of primary school teachers
Chapter 26 (368-376)
The training of nursery assistants and teachers' aides

Part 7 Independent schools
Chapter 27 (379-386)
Independent primary schools

Part 8 Primary school buildings and equipment; status; and research
Chapter 28 (389-409)
Primary school buildings and equipment
Chapter 29 (410-422)
The status and government of primary education
Chapter 30 (423-427)
Research, innovation and the dissemination of information

Part 9 Conclusions and recommendations
Chapter 31 (431-459)
The costs and priorities of our recommendations
Chapter 32 (460-485)
Recommendations and conclusions

Notes (486-495)
Notes of reservation
Annex A (499-503)
A questionnaire to witnesses
Annex B (504-521)
List of witnesses
Annex C (522-536)
Visits made
Glossary (537-541)
Index (545-555)

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.

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1229. Our terms of reference 'primary education in all its aspects and the transition to secondary education' were wide ranging. Our interpretation has been correspondingly wide. We conceived it as our duty to see the primary school not only in its strictly educational context but also as a part of society and of the economy.

1230. The cost of the proposals we have made is large. This is in part the cost of bringing a system designed for 'other people's children' up to the standard which 'a good and wise parent' would accept for his own children. Neither in our staffing proposals, nor in our demand for buildings and equipment, have we been luxurious or extravagant. What we propose does not go beyond what is needed to provide a perfectly ordinary, well staffed school. Yet in the present difficult economic circumstances it is not a programme capable of being carried out in the next five years.

1231. Since the war there has been a great increase in secondary education and in further and higher education. These developments were necessary if we were to hold our own with other advanced industrial countries. We are certainly not leading an advance party. This progress, however, has been in part at the expense of primary education. We think that a higher priority in the total educational budget ought now to be given to primary education. It is desirable in its own right: nobody ought to be satisfied with the conditions under which many of the four million primary school children are educated. It is also desirable in the interests of secondary and further education. A good deal of the money spent on older children will be wasted if more is not spent on them during their primary school years. Yet not everything costs money. Some of our recommendations call mainly for changes of attitude, understanding and knowledge in individual teachers.

1232. In the introduction to our report we posed certain questions. Now we attempt to answer them. We found that the Hadow reports understated rather than overestimated the differences between children. They are too great for children to be tidily assigned to streams or types of schools. Children are unequal in their endowment and in their rates of development. Their achievements are the result of the interaction of nature and of nurture. We conclude that the Hadow emphasis on the individual was right though we would wish to take it further. Whatever form of organisation is adopted, teachers will have to adapt their methods to individuals within a class or school. Only in this way can the needs of gifted and slow learning children and all those between the extremes be met.

1233. The appraisal we have made of the curriculum, and of the methods which have proved to be the most fruitful, confirm many or most of the suggestions that our predecessors made. Their insights have been justified and refined by experience. 'Finding out' has proved to be better for children than 'being told'. Children's capacity to create in words, pictorially and

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through many other forms of expression, is astonishing. The third of the three Rs is no longer mere mechanical arithmetic, French has made its way into the primary school, nature study is becoming science. There has been dramatic and continuing advance in standards of reading. The gloomy forebodings of the decline of knowledge which would follow progressive methods have been discredited. Our review is a report of progress and a spur to more.

1234. This may sound complacent. We are not. The more dismal corners of primary education produce plenty of evidence of parochialism, lack of understanding of the needs of children and of the differing homes from which they come, lack of continued training of teachers and lack of opportunities for professional contact. Had we ignored these facts, we should have ignored what is well known to teachers and, increasingly, to parents. If all or most teachers are to approach the standards of the best, far more effort must be put into their in-service training. There may be a good school without good buildings, though this is no excuse for the deplorable conditions in which many children are educated. There cannot be a good school without good teachers. Even one or two can leaven a whole staff. But there are staffs without leaven. We set these facts down here lest we should be accused of wilful ignorance because in the report we have for the most part described English primary education at its best. That in our belief is very good indeed. Only rarely is it very bad. The average is good.

1235. We hope we have described in the report what good primary education is, and how robust, imaginative, sensitive and skilful the work of a good primary school pupil can be. Much of our thinking, however, has been given to considering those children to whose work none of these epithets could be applied. We know that in almost every primary school there are some such children. We know that in some districts almost every child is at a disadvantage that can only be removed by unusual excellence in the school. An outstanding trend in recent years has been the growing awareness of the importance for the individual of his family and social background. The last three reports by the Council and the Robbins report on higher education produced evidence that shows how closely associated are social circumstances and academic achievement. We have been able to set on foot research which has suggested that the most vital factor in a child's home is the attitude to school, and all that goes on there, of his mother and father. The interested parent has the interested child. In contrast we have been conscious of the unfairness that dogs many boys and girls through life. The loss to them, the loss to the community that arises because of the inequality of educational opportunity, is avoidable and in consequence intolerable. We have, therefore, deliberately given their needs the first priority among our recommendations even though this may delay for a while long overdue benefits for the greater number of children. Our proposal for the introduction of educational priority areas, a detailed plan for dealing with a situation to which the Council's last report also drew attention, is sufficiently urgent to be put forward for immediate action even in the present economic difficulties.

1236. We think of primary education as something that ought to start gradually without a sudden transition from whole time home to whole time school, from the day with mother to the day with teacher. This lies behind

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our recommendation for half time education in nursery groups for nearly all four year olds and for a good many three year olds. That is why we have advocated a slightly later start than now to school, and why we have suggested that it may sometimes be right for a mother to be with her child in the classroom until he has settled down. Were this to happen, it would be a symbol of the partnership between schools and parents that we hope will persist in different forms through the whole length of education.

1237. We have recommended a single term of intake to first schools and a complete three year course in them for all children. Perhaps the greatest benefit that time in the infant school gives is confidence in what has been learned. The child's own satisfaction in having really mastered something - whether it be riding a bicycle or telling the time - is important. If the beginnings of school work are only half learned and anxiety-ridden, the effects may persist throughout school days. Confidence in the power to learn is vital.

1238. The middle school will start and finish a year later than the junior school. Its staff will need to be drawn from secondary schools as well as primary. Both have a contribution to make. If the middle school is simply thought of as providing an 'extra year' to the junior school, many children will be working well below their capacity and become bored. If the middle school is thought of as a junior secondary school to be organised and taught in the ways that secondary schools are run, there is an equal risk that we may lose too soon the enquiring spirit which drives a child to follow through an interest without respect to subject frontiers. We cannot give a description of a good middle school because such schools do not yet exist. They will have to work out their own pattern. We can only say that their work must be carried further than that of junior schools, their ways of learning be less stereotyped than those of secondary schools. In a world where secondary schools have increasingly to adapt their style to the needs of older adolescents and near adults, the middle school ought to provide the right environment for the last years of childhood as it passes over into adolescence.

1239. No report on primary education today could be realistic if it did not attempt to deal with the revolutionary change that has come over the composition of the body of teachers. Before the war the schools could count on most teachers giving 40 years of service. A school staff was a body of experienced professionals in which a newcomer could easily learn to find his feet. Today the proportions are often reversed. A small body of experienced teachers is surrounded by a rapidly changing group of young women who expect to marry soon after they leave college and in many cases to leave within a few years, at least for the time being, in order to start their own families. Some return to teaching; more should. When they return they are the richer because they are themselves mothers, the poorer because they have often not had long enough to reach professional competence before they gave up teaching. Some can teach full-time; some part-time. The schools have to accustom themselves to being staffed in a novel way at the same time as they are developing new methods of individual and group work which demand greater competence and co-operation from teachers.

1240. In these circumstances we make recommendations on the staffing of the schools on which we lay special emphasis. The first has only temporary

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application. It is that those who are planning now for the raising of the school leaving age should not reckon on any transfers from the primary schools to carry out the operation. The place for trained primary school teachers is in the primary schools. The second recommendation is that the work of teachers should be lightened by the provision of aides, who should be given one or two years training. The more individual the methods of teaching, the stronger the case for teachers' aides. The scheme will be expensive; we are sure the teachers deserve the relief it will provide.

1241. The favourable judgement we have formed of English primary education as a whole, and the confidence with which we have made far reaching recommendations for its development, reflect the devoted and perceptive service of the vast majority of the 140,000 primary school teachers. Most of what is best in English schools has come straight from individual teachers. We could wish no child a happier fate than to encounter, as many do, a good teacher.

1242. We have summarised our main recommendations and conclusions at the end of the chapters to which they apply. Chapter 30 contains recommendations on further studies and research and Chapter 31 discusses the main priorities which should be adopted. In this chapter we draw together our main recommendations and indicate the agency from which action on them is required. We also indicate those recommendations which will result in markedly increased expenditure or a change in law. Many of our lesser recommendations and suggestions are not summarised here and must be found in the main body of the report.

1243. The following are our main recommendations. Those calling for extra expenditure are marked (£). Those requiring changes of law or of the Department's Regulations are marked (*).

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[Key:
Burnham: committee regulating teachers' pay
DES: Depart of Education and Science
HMIs: Her Majesty's Inspectors
HO: Home Office
LCAs: this is only mentioned once and I'm afraid I have no idea what it stands for - any ideas?
LEAs: Local Education Authorities
LHAs: Local Health Authorities
LPAs: Local Planning Authorities
M. of HLG: Ministry of Housing and Local Government
MoH: Ministry of Health
NFER: National Foundation for Educational Research
Pelham: committee regulating college lecturers' pay]

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1244. The Council were asked in August 1963 'to consider primary education in all its aspects and the transition to secondary education'.

1245. Our terms of reference were wide and we must begin by acknowledging our debt to all who have helped us. The fact that we cannot mention them all individually does not lessen our gratitude. The list of witnesses alone which follows in Annex C is some measure of the response that met our request for information and statements of views. Their written evidence, in many cases supplemented by oral evidence, went deeply into the questions at issue and gave us much information on current practice all over the country. Copies of written evidence received have been lodged in the Department of Education and Science Library. In addition we were helped on many issues by the response of the 2,500 teachers who answered our questionnaire (Appendix 1, Volume 2).

1246. We could not adequately have covered the many aspects involved had we worked only as a full Council. We began our first year by dividing into two study groups and visited nurseries, infant and junior schools, and the lower forms of secondary schools. We also formed eight working parties and groups to study different aspects of our work in depth. These working parties, too, visited schools, colleges of education and some university departments of education. As the enquiry went forward further visits were made in the course of which more specific and detailed issues were discussed. Many of the judgements reached in our report have been tested and affected by what we saw and heard as we visited schools about the country. In all we visited 267 schools and 11 colleges of education in England and in Scotland. To the children and individual teachers who received us into their classrooms, to the members and officials of local education committees who welcomed us, we are indeed grateful. They answered our questions willingly and our informal meetings with them were most valuable. The Council, the Working Parties, the Working Groups and Study Groups between them met 107 times and all of their meetings occupied the equivalent of 116 days. Four hundred and sixty-five papers on different subjects were received, leaving aside the evidence submitted by outside bodies.

1247. We wished to know something of the current thinking about primary education in some other countries. We were fortunate in being able to visit some Scottish schools and schools and other establishments in countries outside the United Kingdom. For arranging these visits and for the hospitality received during them we are grateful to the Royal Danish Ministry of Education, the French Ministry of Education and L'Institut Pedagogique Nationale, the Polish Ministry of Education, the Royal Swedish Board of Education, the Ministries of Education of the USSR and Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) and to many universities, schools and school districts in the USA. Our visits were necessarily brief and we have not thought it right to produce accounts of them because we could not do justice to the structure and content of primary education in each of these countries in the short time at our disposal. The visits served, however, to put our own problems and achievements into perspective and to make us examine more closely some of our own assumptions.

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1248. In Annex C we list the names of those who received us so kindly in our own country and abroad and hope that they will take this as further evidence of our gratitude to them. It was interesting to find how, despite the different philosophies of the various countries, we were all concerned with many of the same issues. We are indebted to our hosts and to the numerous officials of the Foreign Office, the British Council and the Department of Education and Science who made these visits possible.

1249. At the beginning of our work, we commissioned various studies and research, reports and full acknowledgements of which will be found in Volume 2. We must thank here Mr GF Peaker CBE, the architect of the multiple regression analyses in the National Survey, which has so greatly influenced our thinking. We were fortunate in having a ready response from all of those whom we asked to make research studies of which we have been able to make use at many points of our enquiry.

1250. We should not have been able to make our study 'in all its aspects' without the help of those who administer and those who are expert in primary education. Our thanks are due particularly to those members of the Department of Education and Science who have given us so freely of their time and knowledge. Equally we have been helped by individual members and by the accumulated experience of the whole of HM Inspectorate. The disinterested advice which was given to us was of great value and fundamental to our thinking. We wish to record our special debt to Mr DG Ayerst CBE, the late Miss VL Gray HMI, Dr K Whitmore and to Dr GAV Morgan HMI, Secretary to the Welsh Central Advisory Council. Mr JEH Blackie CB HMI, Mr DH Leadbetter CB, Miss EM McDougall HMI, and Miss ME Nicholls HMI, acted as our assessors. Their wide knowledge of the complicated structure and pattern of education in this country, and of primary education in particular, was of the greatest help to our deliberations and in guiding us through difficulties. We were fortunate in having for the larger part of our enquiries the wise counsel of Miss N Goddard, Inspector of Schools, ILEA. Her imaginative guidance on the education of the younger children contributed greatly to our studies. For a shorter time we were greatly helped by Mr DT Jones OBE HMI.

1251. We owe a large debt to Miss SMC Duncan HMI, who has been associated with our work from the beginning. Her deep understanding of the problems under discussion was a great strength to us and she was our main source of educational advice. The burden of the organisation of our work fell on our Secretary, Mr M Kogan. His clarity of thought made a major contribution to our work and, in particular, he took the responsibility for advising us on the economic aspects of our investigation. To him and to Miss Duncan we wish to record our deep obligation. They initiated and handled a vast volume of material and worked under pressure for over three years. Our enquiry has been so many sided that we could never have dealt with it adequately without their far-sightedness, their energy and their knowledge. Our discussions with them have stimulated our thought and warned us of pitfalls.

1252. We were fortunate in having as Assistant Secretaries Mr N Summers from 1963 to 1965 and Miss CK Burke from 1964 to 1966 who met the heavy demands made on them with great competence. The Secretariat were

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supported by an industrious and efficient team, to whom we are most grateful: Mr RG Ross, Mr RH Sinclair, Miss SA Swinburne, Mr D Dobbie, Mr DW Brown, Miss MT McFall and Mrs A Reich. Skilled assistance from many people was provided by the Department of Education and Science for dealing with all the necessary paperwork.

(Signed)

Bridget Plowden (Chairman)
John Newsom (Deputy Chairman)
HG Armstrong
AJ Ayer
MFM Bailey
Moyra Bannister
M Brearley
ICR Byatt
JP Campbell
DV Donnison
ZE Dix
Charles Gittins
S Ena Grey
EW Hawkins
EM Parry
Alan Puckey
THF Raison
EV Smith
RT Smith
JM Tanner
LL Thwaytes
T Harold Tunn
H Martin Wilson
FM White
Michael Young

M Kogan (Secretary)