ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses developments in primary education in terms of four general topics – contraction, curriculum, pedagogy and evaluation. The golden age of the sixties is unlikely to be echoed by an 'eighties' equivalent but the issues have still to be worked through. 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. But contraction itself is only part of the wider social context where the problem of social control is a dominant one. The primary survey did provide evidence as to the extent to which certain curriculum items appeared in the classes inspected, but no overall analysis of the range of the primary curriculum was published. By pedagogy is meant that complex of teaching approaches, skills, strategies tactics and forms of organization through which the curriculum is transacted by teachers and pupils.
