ABSTRACT
Desmond Nuttall had a long standing interest in the work of Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools (HMI). They, like himself, were centrally interested in evaluating the effectiveness of the provision of education in schools. Desmond Nuttall thus argues that if HMI's judgments are to be given greater credibility then HMI need to reveal the way in which they collect their evidence, so that its credibility can be tried and tested, along with everything else in education. The aim of the Secondary Survey—'to offer some account of how well schools provide and their pupils respond in the fourth and fifth years of secondary education'—sounds modest. The report has many admirable qualities: it is easy to read and undoubtedly achieves its major aim of painting a richly diverse picture of the fourth and fifth years of secondary education.
