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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 27 (unnumbered)]
[page 29] 76. One of the main themes of Chapter 2 is the interaction between a child's inheritance and his environment. In this chapter we single out the evidence of research - and in particular of our National Survey* - on how much parents influence children's achievement at school and how their influence operates. 77. The Hadow Report on the Primary School (1) acknowledged the good fortune of children who enter school 'with the foundations of education ... well laid' and who, as they grow older, acquire 'almost as much general knowledge in the home as ... in the school, and ... almost as much information about the world and its way during leisure hours ... as from the formal lessons in the classroom'. The report contrasted the plight of the child from the poor home; 'his vocabulary is limited, his general knowledge is narrow; he has little opportunity for reading and his power of expressing himself ... is inadequate'. Despite this acceptance of the importance of the home, the Hadow Report did not give any prominence to it. The main reference occurs in a sub-section on environment which was tacked on to a chapter on mental development. 78. Why then do we devote so much attention to this subject? The power of environment is more obvious than it was then. The progress made since 1931 testifies to it. The rise in educational standards is due to improvements in the schools themselves; but it is also due to changes in the homes from which the children come, and, beyond the homes, to changes in the wider society of which the children and their parents are members. Unemployment has been almost non-existent since the war except in some areas and for a small minority of workers. Incomes have risen, nutrition has improved, housing is better, the health service and the rest of the social services have brought help where it is needed. Some of these changes stand out from a summary of parental circumstances based on interviews with parents of children in primary schools, included in the National Survey (Appendix 3). Parents from all walks of life use these schools. They are more and more a cross-section of the nation. Fathers of children included in the National Survey Sample belong to occupational groups in the same proportions as those which characterise all married men in the country as judged by the 1961 Census. We are nearer, it seems, to the ideal of the Hadow Committee 'the primary school, the common school of the whole population' (2). 79. It is apparent that most of the children are now physically healthy, vigorous, curious and alert. Though many primary school buildings date back to 1931 and long before, few children have the pinched faces or poor clothes often seen in photographs of 30 years ago. Yet some children and some parents tail far behind. Twelve per cent of the families in the National Survey had a net income from all sources of £12 10s 0d [£12.50] a week or less. The difficulties of children in such families such as these are discussed in Chapter 5. *The whole Survey appears as Appendices 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 in Volume 2. Its full title is the '1964 National Survey of Parental Attitudes and Circumstances Related to School and Pupil Characteristics'. It is described in the main report as the National Survey. [page 30] 80. If all goes well, progress in material standards will continue, and over the next 30 years the schools will continue to benefit. But educators are not just the beneficiaries of progress; they are its makers too. Our argument in this and the following chapters is that educational policy should explicitly recognise the power of the environment upon the school and of the school upon the environment. Teachers are linked to parents by the children for whom they are both responsible. The triangle should be completed and a more direct relationship established between teachers and parents. They should be partners in more than name; their responsibility become joint instead of several. 81. The need for this is apparent from the results of the National Survey. This enquiry has taken further the investigations undertaken for the Council in connection with each of its three last reports. 82. Early Leaving (1954) (3), the first of the three reports, answered a very practical question; why did so many children drop out before completing the grammar school course? It was no surprise that the children of manual workers did less well academically than other children and more often left school at the minimum age. Surely they failed because they were less clever? The surprise, at the time, was that this was far from being the only reason. The enquiry showed that the children of semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers, who were in the top flight of the grammar school intake at the age of 11, had as a group by the end of their secondary school life been overtaken by the children of professional families who had initially been placed below them. Our predecessors summed up their conclusion on the issue as follows: 'In our analysis we have been concerned only with broad classifications, and we are well aware that many individual children of well-to-do parents find little support at home for hard work at school and academic ambition, while many children from very poor homes have parents who know the worth of the education they themselves missed. Still it is beyond doubt that a boy whose father is of professional or managerial standing is more likely to find his home circumstances favourable to the demands of grammar school work than one whose father is an unskilled or semi-skilled worker. The latter is handicapped.'The Newsom Report (4) showed that this handicap was still there about ten years later, but suggested that it might be lessening, at least in the grammar schools. In these schools, the improvement among children from the lower occupational groups was greater than among children from the higher ones. A Pool of Ability 83. The Crowther Report (1959) dealt with the same theme. Young men were given intelligence tests after they had left school, on recruitment to the Army and the RAF [Royal Air Force]. The length of their education was found to be related more closely to the occupation of their parents and to the size of their families than to their intelligence scores. Among the sons of manual workers who left school yearly [early?] there were many of high ability. It was clear that children of high academic promise were not benefiting fully from their education. 'It may well be that there is a pool of ability that imposes an upper limit on what can be done by education at any given time. But if so it is sufficiently clear [page 31] that the limit has not been reached and will not even be approached without much more in the way of inducement and opportunity.' (5) 84. Other research has shown a marked association between parental occupation and measured intelligence, although it has of course always been clear that exceptionally able children, dull children and children who are failing to realise their potential are to be found in each occupational group. There is some evidence that the gap between measured intelligence of the children of manual workers and of middle class parents begins to widen at a very early age and that the causes are both genetic, as might be supposed from the argument in Chapter 2, and environmental. Hindley found evidence for the widening gap, admittedly on a small sample, in the pre-school years (6). The polarisation continues, according to Douglas, at the primary stage. At 11 the scores and achievement of children from the different classes are further apart than they were at eight (7). This growing apart did not occur in Scotland (8). In England, the process persists in the secondary school. The Robbins Report on higher education referred to the evidence about primary and secondary schools, and concluded that the handicaps imposed on the children of manual workers throughout the years at school did not seem to have been getting less. When the classes were compared, 'it looks as if the relative chances of reaching higher education have changed little in recent years'. (9) Prospects for Improvement 85. The research and surveys cited, and much else to the same effect, suggest that we are far from realising the potential abilities of our children. To reveal the influence of parental occupation is a criticism of society; but it is also an opportunity for reform. There must always be a great diversity of parental occupations; but they need not continue to have their present severe discriminatory effect on children's educational prospects. The grosser deprivations arising from poverty can be removed. More parents can be brought to understand what education can do for their children, and how they can work with the schools. The educational disadvantage of being born the child of an unskilled worker is both financial and psychological. Neither handicap is as severe as it was. Both are more severe than they need be. Educational equality cannot be achieved by the schools alone: but the schools can make a major contribution towards ensuring (as Sir Edward Boyle wrote in his foreword to the Newsom report) 'that all children should have an equal opportunity of acquiring intelligence'. 86. The last three reports of the Council drew attention to the numerous exceptions to the rule that they established. They pointed to the homes and the schools which produce good or even brilliant results in spite of adverse circumstances. Our own enquiries have been directed to throwing light on the reasons for these exceptions. If we can pinpoint the factors which make good work possible in apparently unlikely circumstances, we may see what most needs to be done to enlarge the numbers of those who succeed. What is it about the home that matters so much? That was the main question we wished to have explored. The National Survey 87. For our survey a sample of schools was drawn, stratified by size and type. In the first instance the sample included 107 junior and junior mixed and infant [page 32] schools but, when the separate infant schools contributing to the junior schools in the sample were added, the total number of schools included came to 173. A sample of about 3,000 children within these schools was then drawn from the oldest infant, first year junior and fourth year junior classes, and the Government Social Survey conducted interviews with their mothers (or, very occasionally, their fathers). The questions asked are listed in Appendix 3 which describes the survey of parental attitudes and its findings in detail. 88. At about the same time that the interviews were held, information was being collected from the 173 head teachers about their schools, the ways in which they were organised and staffed, and their relationships with parents. Class teachers added information about the children in the sample. The attainments of the children were assessed by reading comprehension tests, and a picture intelligence test was also given to top infants. For comparison of the attainment of children within schools, pupils were arranged in rank order by teachers. The opportunity was taken to test the whole top junior group (not only those children in the sample) in reading comprehension, so that comparisons could be made with earlier reading standards. (See Appendix 7). HMIs visited the schools, described the methods used and assessed the teaching. The questions asked of head teachers, teachers and HMIs are included in the annexes to the National Survey (Volume 2). Many references are also made to this data in the text of our report. 89. The main purpose of the survey was to relate what we could learn about home and school to the attainment of the children. For the summarised table in this chapter, the variables used are grouped into three categories. What is included in each category is shown in detail in Appendix 4 (Tables 1 and 3). The first category is broadly called 'Parental Attitudes'. These attitudes were assessed by parents' answers to such questions as the age at which they wanted children to leave school and the secondary school they preferred. The initiative shown by parents in visiting the school, in talking to heads and class teachers and asking for work for children to do at home was also taken into account. Parents were asked about the time they spent with children in the evening and whether they helped children with school work. There was also an assessment of the literacy of the home as judged by what parents and children read, whether they belonged to a library and the number of books in the home. The second category is 'Home Circumstances', including the physical amenities of the home, or lack of them, the occupation and income of the father, the size of family, the length of parents' education and the qualifications they had obtained. The third category is the 'State of the School'. It covers facts about school organisations such as size of school, size of class and the ways children were put into classes. It also includes facts provided by the head about the experience of the staff and their attendance at short courses, and judgements by HMIs on the quality of the school and the competence of teachers. The Findings of the Survey 90. The analyses made are more complex than those in previous CAC [Central Advisory Council] reports. Not only has more information been gathered about various in- [page 33] fluences on attainment; it has been possible to explore more fully the interrelationship between these influences. The detailed tables in Appendix 4 consequently show not only the simple correlations between individual variables and attainment but also their correlations when the influence of all other variables is taken into account. We can thus show the extent to which each variable 'explains' variations in attainment. Size of family, for example, has long been known to be correlated with performance, children from smaller families doing better on the whole than those from larger. But when the effects of other variables are eliminated, family size does not explain the children's test performance as effectively as the attitude of their parents. On the whole, in large families, parents tend to be lower in aspiration, literacy and interest than in small families, and there are obvious reasons why this should be so. But in families of each size - one child, two children and so forth - the difference between the performance of the children varies even more according to the attitudes of the parents. 91. The figures given in Table 1 [below] show, for different ages, the percentage of the variation in performance which can be accounted for by the three main categories of variable. For each age group the comparisons made in the table are of two kinds, between pupils within schools and between schools. The object of this division was to bring out the extent to which a school's situation depends on the neighbourhood it serves. For comparisons between schools the unit of analysis was the school, and the variables were based on the average for each school of the original variables. For comparisons within schools the variables were the deviations of each pupil from the school average. If Table 1 Percentage Contribution of Parental Attiutudes, Home Circumstances and State of School to Variation in Educational Performance.
*The unexplained variation is due to differences between children which have not been covered by our variables, and also to errors in measurement. That so much variation has been explained - the amount in the between-schools analysis is remarkable for an enquiry of this kind - is due in part to the comparatively simple nature of the criterion variable, a reading comprehension test. [page 34] neighbourhood were unimportant, and the parents, pupils and teachers in each school were merely random samples of the general population, the two kinds of analysis would give the same result. In fact, they do not; the comparisons between schools account for more variation than those within schools. This is because pupils, parents and teachers in the same school and neighbourhood resemble one another more than they resemble pupils, parents and teachers in general, just as apples growing on the same tree resemble one another more than they resemble apples in general. The apples on a tree in a good situation will do better than those on a tree in a poor situation, unless the latter receives special attention - an implication that is pursued in later chapters. Importance of Parental Attitudes 92. The most striking feature of both these sets of comparisons is the large part played by parental attitudes, and the fact that it tends to be greater among the older than the younger children. Not surprisingly, there are changes of emphasis within the attitudes of parents as children grow older. Parents' interest is likely to be greater in the children's early years at school when, as the interviewers found, they were more confident about helping children in their work, because they understood it better. It yields some ground to parental aspiration as the children reach the top of the junior school. By that time the children's very success or failure in school work may increase or weaken parental aspiration. 93. The influence of the home has always been known to be important, and the importance of parental attitudes began to emerge in earlier studies such as those of Fraser (10), Floud, Halsey and Martin (11), but now its importance can be better understood. Broadly the same results stand out from other surveys made for us by Professor Wiseman in Manchester on a small group of children, and by those responsible for the National Child Development Study which deals with a national sample, considerably larger than ours, of children born in one week in 1958. Their reports, based mainly on simple correlations, appear in Appendices 9 and 10. 94. Everything that can be learned from the survey about parents and their relation to the schools is therefore important as a signpost for action. First, the interest shown by parents in the enquiry itself is highly encouraging. Only three per cent refused an interview and interviews were carried out with 95 per cent of the sample, a remarkably high response. Over half the interviews lasted for an hour or longer because parents were anxious to talk about their children. More than half the parents had left school at 14, yet three quarters wanted their children to stay at school beyond the minimum age. There was little difference in the number of evenings when parents from different socio-economic groups could spend some time with their children; but it is rather disconcerting to find that only about half the mothers did things with their children for some part of most evenings. Similarly, there was little distinction between the proportion of parents in each occupational group who said they wanted the schools to give their children work to do at home. Yet a far smaller proportion of manual workers than of those in other occupations were in fact given work to do at home by their schools. A quarter of all parents, irrespective of the kind of work done by the fathers, were disinclined to visit schools unless they were specially invited. [page 35] 95. So far the emphasis has been on respects in which parents thought alike irrespective of their occupational backgrounds. But there were also marked contrasts between manual and non-manual workers, and even more between those in professional and managerial occupations, and semi-skilled and unskilled workers. Perhaps the most noticeable difference was in the part played by fathers in children's education. Over two fifths of the manual workers had left the choice of school entirely to their wives, as compared with less than a quarter of the non-manual workers. Almost half the manual workers, compared with less than a quarter of non-manual workers, had not been to their child's present school at all. Less than a quarter had talked to the head. 96. What is particularly true of manual workers is true in somewhat smaller measure of their wives. The higher the socio-economic group, the more parents attended open days, concerts and parent-teacher association meetings, and the more often they talked with heads and class teachers about how their children were getting on. Manual workers and their wives were more likely to feel, when they had visited the schools, that they had learnt nothing fresh about their children, or that teachers should have asked them more. Not surprisingly, less help with school work was given at home to children of manual workers. Considerably lower proportions of parents from manual worker homes bought, for use at home, copies of some of the books children were using at school. Two thirds of unskilled workers had five books or fewer in the home, apart from children's books and magazines, as contrasted with one twentieth of professional workers. 97. In view of the fact that 29 per cent of all homes have five books or less, the schools are successful in encouraging children to read. About half of the children borrowed books from school to read at home and four fifths borrowed books either from the school or from public libraries. Only among the children of unskilled workers was there rather less borrowing of books from school, though a substantially bigger proportion of non-manual than of manual workers' children borrowed from public libraries. It looks as though, despite the good work done, the schools need to provide still more books for home use for the children of manual workers. 98. Some explanation may be needed about the relatively low weight which attaches to two of the three variables in Table 1. Some readers may be surprised at what they suppose to be the comparatively small influence of the school. To feel thus is to misunderstand the table. What emerged as important about the schools was the experience and competence of teachers. Most teachers have had a similar education and training, and differ less from one another than parents. The parents have usually had their children in their care for their whole lives, whereas most of the class teachers about whom information was collected had been with the children only for the best part of one school year. It must, therefore, be expected that differences between parents will explain more of the variation in children than differences between schools. It is obvious, too, that parental attitudes may themselves be affected by children's performance at school and by the contacts parents have with schools. 99. Other readers may be surprised that home circumstances at first sight seem less influential than previous enquiries suggested. But this, too, would [page 36] be a misunderstanding. The occupational classification used in the Council's earlier surveys was adopted because it was relatively precise, easily ascertainable and known to be associated with what in this survey we have described as 'parental attitudes'. It should astonish no one to find that, when these attitudes can be assessed separately from socio-economic class, they emerge as more important than occupation taken by itself. 100. A third point that will occur to readers is whether the differences in circumstances account for the differences in attitudes. Our evidence (see Appendix 4) suggests that parents' occupation, material circumstances and education explain only about a quarter of the variation in attitudes, leaving three quarters or more not accounted for. This implies that attitudes could be affected in other ways, and altered by persuasion. 101. Our findings can give hope to the school, to interested parents, and to those responsible for educational policy. Parental attitudes appear as a separate influence because they are not monopolised by any one class. Many manual workers and their wives already encourage and support their children's efforts to learn. If there are many now, there can be even more later. Schools can exercise their influence not only directly upon children but also indirectly through their relationships with parents. 1. Report of the Consultative Committee on the Primary School (Hadow), HMSO, 1931, reprinted 1959, paragraph 48.
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