New Directions in Primary Education

Colin Richards

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429844737
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Originally published in 1982. This book analyses developments in primary education since 1974 and from this analysis draws out issues gaining rapidly in currency and seem likely to have significant impact on primary education in the following decade. As well as including a substantial number of papers written specially for the book, it draws on some of the best of writing on primary education at the time. This is extremely useful for those interested in curriculum history.

1

Introduction: The End of A Golden Age?

Primary Education: 1974–80

Colin Richards
University of Leicester

Starting Point

Normally within the state system a child’s primary education lasts for a minimum of six years. Except for those now in middle schools, children who entered reception classes as five-year-olds in 1974 emerged as primary leavers in 1980. During that six-year period the children themselves are unlikely to have been conscious of many changes (except in their own capabilities), though in fact the pressure on their playground and hall space may have eased, the number of new teachers per year may have fallen and the number of ‘dinner ladies’ and ‘helpers’ in their school may have been reduced. Class teachers during that same period are more likely to have noticed a marked increase, followed by a decline, in the purchasing power of their salaries, a reduction in available resources and support services, an increase in union activity, a reduction in promotion prospects and a general increase in dissatisfaction and unease. Heads are very likely to have become aware of changes in their schools’ economic and ‘political’ circumstances: in particular, a marked reduction in resources which could be purchased through capitation allowances and an increase in parental concern about the achievements of pupils. All such changes have not affected every school and every teacher, but many have had an effect. They are illustrative of more general tendencies which have made the period 1974–80 very different from the corresponding period in the previous decade.

Providing an overview of such general developments is not easy when there are some 20,000 English primary schools and some 200,000 teachers and especially when ‘there is a sense in which there is not a system in Britain, but rather a legal framework within which many independent bodies operate’ (Peston, 1979, p. 11). However, without some such overview it is difficult to relate one development to another or to relate particular instances to more general tendencies. What follows is a tentative attempt to provide a backcloth against which some new directions in English primary education can be identified. With its mixture of facts and impressions the account tries to indicate ideas in currency and issues in context; it does not claim to be based on what was actually happening in all 200,000 classrooms!

The choice of 1974 as the starting point for this analysis is a deliberate one. In the decade prior to 1974 primary education began to shed something of its ‘Cinderella’ status. Between 1960 and 1974 capital expenditure on primary schools increased tenfold in money terms and doubled its share of total capital expenditure on education; total expenditure on primary education increased in real terms by 54 per cent between 1964 and 1974; real current expenditure per pupil increased 15 per cent in the period 1970–74; primary pupil-teacher ratios in England and Wales improved from 1:28.3 in 1965 to 1:24.7 in 1974 (according to Peston, 1979). Primary education was the subject of three-year inquiries by the Central Advisory Councils for Education whose reports published in 1967 endorsed the curricular and pedagogic trends they detected and brought the sector into the political limelight. Building programmes, action research projects, the expansion of nursery education and of teacher training and the provision of extra allowances and resources in EPA areas all acknowledged the new priority being accorded the sector both by the Wilson administrations of 1964–70 and the succeeding Heath government whose White Paper, A Framework for Expansion (1972) promised ‘to bring about a shift of resources within the education budget in favour of primary schools’. Characterized by post-Plowden euphoria, primary education was witnessing ‘a golden age’, even though in 1972 there was a disquietening report on reading standards (Start and Wells, 1972) and in December 1973 government expenditure cuts were announced by Antony Barber following a tremendous increase in world oil prices.

Though there were no startling educational events in 1974, a number of developments can be traced back to that year. It was the year when the Barber cuts began to have an impact, when local government was reorganized, when an announcement was made about the setting up of the Assessment of Performance Unit, when the feasibility study for the HMI primary survey was undertaken and when the Houghton report on teachers’ pay was issued. In January 1974 Terry Ellis took up his headship at William Tyndale Junior School; in September the Bullock Report, recommending a system of monitoring, was submitted to the Secretary of State; and, in December, Burstall reported that following a large-scale evaluation study there was ‘on balance’ no case for the further extension of primary French (Burstall et al, 1974). It was also in 1974 when the number of primary children in England and Wales first fell from a peak the previous year and when the Permanent Secretary at the Department of Education and Science ‘wondered aloud’ to an OECD examining panel ‘whether the Government could continue to debar itself from what had been termed “the secret garden of the curriculum’”.

The period since 1974 could be presented in a variety of ways, each with its advantages and disadvantages. Instead of presenting a chronology of significant events or characterizing the period in terms of the activities of particular individuals, this chapter analyzes developments in primary education in terms of four general topics – contraction, curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation. In relation to each topic, particular issues are identified, and selected events and persons in turn related briefly to these.

Contraction

In contrast to the expansion and optimism noted above, ‘the educational story of the last few years is one of a retreat from optimism and a decline not only in the value placed upon education but also in the .scale of the enterprise’ (Bernbaum, 1979, pp. 1–2). Contraction provides the backdrop against which other educational developments have occurred. The long-term impact of contraction is impossible to determine but already it has had important repercussions for the education service in general and for primary education in particular. Even so its significance has, arguably, not fully penetrated the consciousness of many practitioners whose frames of reference are still embedded in the expansive context of that ‘golden age’ before 1974. Contraction has taken, and continues to take, a variety of forms: demographic, economic and, more elusively, a contraction in expectations.

In terms of demography the primary school population in England and Wales reached a peak in 1973 when there were about 5¼ million children in maintained nursery and primary schools; by 1979 numbers had fallen by about half a million (Collings, 1980). During the period 1974–79 the total number of qualified teachers in English nursery and primary schools fell by almost 3,000 to 194,000, though the pupil-teacher ratio improved from 1:24.9 to 1:23.1, thus sustaining the improvement from 1965 already noted (DES, 1979b). This drop of half a million pupils coupled with central government and local authority policies has had a decimating effect on primary teacher training (Hencke, 1978); has resulted in considerable staff redeployment; and has caused the closure or amalgamation of a very considerable number of schools. Falling rolls have contributed to the disappearance of remedial teaching and other part-time provision in some schools; to a greater incidence of mixed-age classes; to a lessening of teacher mobility across local authority boundaries; and to problems in covering an appropriate range of work in the curriculum (Thomas, 1980). Such difficulties are likely to be exacerbated in the next five years since a further fall of one million primary-aged pupils will occur in England and Wales by 1986. Of the 30 per cent decline in primary population between 1974 and 1986 only just over a third had affected schools by the beginning of 1980. Whereas policy-makers in the fifties and sixties were preoccupied by the problems of teacher supply and school building for a rapidly expanding population, those of the eighties will be preoccupied with the still more difficult task of managing a contracting service (as discussed by Eric Briault in his article). Any changes in curriculum, pedagogy, evaluation, organization development or educational research suggested later in this book will take place against this backcloth.

The demographic turndown occurred at the same time as the rate of growth of most western economies declined sharply. The mid- and late-seventies were years of economic recession with a relative decline in world trade, large increases in rates of unemployment and, in the United Kingdom, an unusually high rate of domestic inflation. In Britain, big spending services such as education ‘ground to a crawl as the hare of public expenditure was harnessed to the tortoise of economic growth’ (MacDonald, 1979, p. 28). Pressures for greater cost-effectiveness grew stronger; politicians such as James Callaghan in his 1976 Ruskin College speech wondered whether the education service was giving value for money. In view of demographic trends and developing political disillusionment with education (referred to below) education budgets were tempting targets, especially in crisis years such as 1976 when a package of £6000 million public expenditure cuts was announced. It is, however, important to note that, comparing 1974/75 with 1978/79, central government’s total current and capital expenditure on state schools fell less than is commonly supposed: there was a fall of £406 million in capital expenditure partly compensated by a rise of £319 million on current expenditure at 1979 survey prices (White Paper Cmnd. 7841, 1980). There were some major casualties: for example, capital expenditure for nursery education peaked at £46 million in 1975/76 and fell to less than £15 million in succeeding years. What did contract during this period was planned expenditure for the expansion of the education service. However, the four years from 1980 onwards certainly threaten more substantial ‘real’ cuts in government expenditure. Attention here has been focused on central government, but throughout the latter half of the seventies local authorities, too, were instituting economies in the education service, partly because of pressure on their locally-generated resources – as witnessed by successive cuts in capitation allowances in ‘real’ terms, cut-backs in-service provision of various kinds and drastic reductions in ancillary services.

Less easy to characterize and to document is a third aspect of contraction – contraction in political, public and professional expectations of schooling. The following extract from an editorial written towards the end of 1974 provides the background to this disillusionment and illustrates the emergence of professional awareness of it:

In retrospect the period 1960–70 may well appear as a golden age for education. During that decade educational institutions were regarded as very important indeed, even vital to our future well-being as a nation. Expenditure on education rose rapidly; expansion was the order of the day; public interest grew greater and more informed. Education was claimed as a most important factor in promoting social equality, racial harmony, technological advance, economic prosperity, individual mental health. On both sides of the Atlantic public funds were grasped eagerly in attempts to bring these claims to reality. Yet this reality has remained elusive; education has not produced startling changes in the wider society. With recent cut-backs in expenditure, reaction to ROSLA, fall-off in university applications and retrenchment in teacher education, could we be witnessing the beginnings of governmental and public disillusionment with educational institutions? If so, then part of the blame lies with those in education who have claimed too much, who have promised goods they couldn’t possibly deliver, unaided by major social and economic changes in society.

(Richards, 1975, p. 3)

By the mid-seventies politicians had become highly sceptical about the relationship of educational investment to economic growth and about the socially equalizing effects of such investment. The grandiose claims of the ‘sixties were replaced in Callaghan’s Ruskin College speech by more sober, pragmatic purposes: ‘to equip children to the best of their ability for a lively, constructive place in society and also to fit them to do a job of work’ (Callaghan, 1976). From viewing education as a social panacea, and primary education in particular as a major weapon against poverty, politicians became much more circumspect in their statements about education: a suspicion, even resentment, of being misled by educationists could be detected. It is less easy to document public and professional reactions: how far the former shared politicians’ bold aspirations and consequent disillusionment is not clear, though there were certainly worries about educational standards, which are discussed later. How far professionals shared the decline in expectations is not easy to discover. Undoubtedly, some were disillusioned that the education service had not fulfilled the social democratic ideals of the ‘sixties. All were caught up in the general unease and disillusion of a nation (and education system) in crisis and contraction. At national level the unbridled assertions of the previous decade were far less in evidence – both during the ‘Great Debate’ of 1977 and its aftermath. The heady idealism of Plowden gave way to the m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• General Editor’s Preface
• Foreword
• 1 INTRODUCTION: THE END OF A GOLDEN AGE?
• 2 THE PRIMARY CURRICULUM: THE END OF LAISSEZ-FAIRE?
• 3 EVALUATION AND ACCOUNTABILITY: THE END OF INTUITION?
• 4 POLICY, ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT: THE END OF TEACHER AUTONOMY?
• 5 STUDYING PRIMARY CLASSROOMS: THE END OF THE BLACK BOX?
• 6 POSTSCRIPT: THE END OF PRIMARY SCHOOLING?
• Contributors
• Author Index
• Subject Index