Plowden: Progressive Education—A 4-Decade Odyssey?

Abstract

A review of Children and their primary schools, a report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) (Bridget Plowden, Chair. 1967. London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office.)

Notes

Notes

1 These were “Report on the Education of the Adolescent” (1926), “Report on the Primary School” (1931) and “Report on Infant and Nursery Schools” (1933).

2 This was a junior school in which three of the teachers introduced radical reforms. At a time when the optimism of Plowden was giving way to concern about standards, curriculum content, etc., the public inquiry conducted by Robin Auld QC became a lightning conductor for both pro- and anti-Plowden perspectives on primary schooling, while underneath more fundamental issues simmered regarding the aims of primary education, control of the curriculum standards and attainment, etc. The school was closed as a consequence of the inquiry.

3 Thomas Gradgrind, the philistine schoolmaster in Dickens’ Hard Times (1854), is sometimes used as the exemplar or epitome of oppressive education.

4 The Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) was created in the early 1990s as a privatised inspectorate to police nationally prescribed curricula. Since then it has gone through various metamorphoses while continuing to be a powerful presence in the English education system. For further information, see ofsted.gov.uk.

5 Rose (2009, p. 17) identifies “six areas of learning” as follows: “understanding English, communication and languages, Mathematical understanding, Scientific and technological understanding, Historical, geographical and social understanding, Understanding physical development, health and wellbeing, Understanding the arts”: The Cambridge Review seeks to reconcile national prescription with local needs and autonomy, and proposes that 70% of teaching time be a common national curriculum with the remaining 30% being “locally proposed and non-statutory” while instead of “areas of learning,” eight domains are suggested: “arts and creativity, citizenship and ethics, faith and belief, language, oracy and literacy, mathematics, physical and emotional health, place and time, science and technology” (Cambridge Primary Review, 2009a, 2009b, p. 56).