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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 xxiii (unnumbered)]
[page 1] 1. When the Minister of Education asked us 'to consider primary education in all its aspects and the transition to secondary education', he was in effect inviting us to tell him how far the intentions of Sir Henry Hadow and his committee had been carried out and how well they had stood the test of time. Hadow, if any man, has the right to be considered the architect of the English educational system as we know it. The three reports of the Consultative Committee under his chairmanship, the Education of the Adolescent (1926), the Primary School (1931) and Infant and Nursery Schools (1933), virtually laid the foundation of what exists today. The purpose to be achieved, and the test by which its success can be recognised, he defined in 1931 in these words 'What a wise and good parent will desire for his own children, a nation must desire for all children.' Of course, equality of opportunity, even when it means weighting the scales to reduce inequalities, still results in unequal achievements. But, coupled with a commitment to the highest educational standards, it is the touchstone to apply. 2. Underlying all educational questions is the nature of the child himself. Are children of today at the same stage of development as children of the same age were in 1926? Ought all, or nearly all, children of the same age to be able to do the same things? How great are the differences between boys and girls, and do they vary with age? If a child's 'intelligence' is tested at the age of eight or eleven, will the results hold good five or six years later? What is the relationship between environmental and genetic factors in the shaping of human ability? We know more than was known a generation ago about physical, intellectual and emotional development in children. Though nobody would suppose that we have now reached final truth, we are in a position to look again at some of the conclusions drawn by the Hadow reports. We do so in Part II of the Report. 3. In recent years a growing awareness has developed of the importance to the individual of his family and social background. The last three reports of the Council, and the Robbins report on higher education, have shown how closely associated are home and social circumstances and academic achievement. Is this just one of those given facts about which schools, and the community, can do nothing? To try to answer this question, we set on foot a National Survey which is included with other surveys of the same nature in Volume 2. Increasing numbers of parents are asking, and we are glad they are asking, how they can help to get the schools their children deserve. Part III of the Report is devoted to these questions of home, neighbourhood and school. It is in part about especially difficult districts or peculiarly awkward circumstances such as how to teach children who do not speak English at home. Most of Part III is about the school round any corner, the schools in which over nine-tenths of our young children are educated. 4. We have studied the structure of primary education and give our conclusions in Part IV. We have dealt with the provision which might be made for [page 2] nursery education; we have discussed the length of primary school life. All this we could hardly have avoided doing since we were asked to deal with 'all aspects of primary education'. We have considered not only what is desirable, but whether what is desirable is feasible. One aspect of our enquiry has been made especially difficult and that is a matter on which our advice was specifically asked - the age of transfer to secondary education. In July 1965 the Department of Education and Science asked local education authorities to prepare detailed plans for the development of comprehensive education in their areas before our recommendations were known. The shape of secondary schools, and the accommodation they will require, depend on the age at which primary education ends. It would have been better if the momentous changes in the overall structure of education - the raising of the school leaving age and the associated changes in the age of transfer and secondary school organisation - could have been considered together. We hope that our arguments in favour of a new age of transfer will be taken into account when building programmes and teacher training are planned for the 1970s. 5. The growth of comprehensive education is altering the context in which the primary schools work. In 1963, when we started work, the '11 plus' and all that went before was a major item on our agenda. Should it be retained? This proved to be a question we did not have to answer, though we may say that we welcome the disappearance of transfer examinations. We were left with another question to discuss. In the past many primary schools have 'worked to' the 11 plus. If it has not been their Bible, it has often been a taskmaster. It set up minimum standards for the abler children, often in our view the wrong ones and distorting in their effects on the curriculum. But at least they were standards. The teachers and parents had some yardstick by which to measure their pupils' work. Now it is going. How are they to know what to expect of children? These are among the problems which we discuss in Part V. 6. Part V, 'The Children in the Schools', is the heart of the Report. Is there any genuine conflict between education based on children as they are, and education thought of primarily as a preparation for the future? Has 'finding out' proved to be better than 'being told'? Have methods been worked out through which discovery can be stimulated and guided, and children develop from it a coherent body of knowledge? Has the emphasis which the Hadow Report placed on individual progress been justified by its results? How can head teachers and class teachers arrange the internal working of each school and each class to meet the different needs of the highly gifted boys and girls, of slow learning pupils, and of all the infinite varieties of talent and interest that lie between? Do children learn more through active cooperation than by passive obedience? In seeking answers to such questions we draw attention to the best practices we have found as a pointer to the direction in which all schools should move. To help children to learn there are 140,000 primary school teachers: they form the subject of Part VI. In this Part, too, the present shortage of teachers is discussed, their training, their use and the support that can best be given to them both inside and outside the school. 7. English primary education has long had a high reputation. We heard repeatedly that English infant schools are the admiration of the world. Were [page 3] they resting on past laurels? Ought we to be learning by the experiments other countries were trying? We went to see. Between us, we paid visits, though they had to be brief, to many primary schools in Denmark, France, Sweden, Poland, USA and the USSR. Our journeyings are set out in Annex C. Our hosts were worried about many of the same things as we were. They were looking critically at curriculum and methods. They were concerned with such questions as how to provide for children of differing abilities, how to help most effectively children from poor circumstances, and how to recruit and make good use of teachers. 8. Finally, since another full scale enquiry into primary education is unlikely to be made for many years, we have thought it our duty in Part IX to give as close an estimate as we can of the cost of our proposals and to indicate an order of priority. 
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