ABSTRACT
In the evolution of educational theory and practice in England and Wales since the beginning of the last century the conception of the primary school for children between the ages of five and eleven, with a separate organisation, where possible, for those between the ages of seven and eleven, marks a new departure and brings with it new problems. To-day primary education is recognised as ending at about the age of eleven; secondary education of various types is that which follows; and the importance of considering the education of children in primary schools as something which must have a character of its own, arises from these facts…clarification of the purpose of the primary school is the necessary pre-requisite of an improvement in its quality. It becomes possible to concentrate attention on the task of making provision for a relatively homogeneous group. If the successful development of secondary education depends on treating the years after eleven as a definite phase in child-life, with distinctive educational requirements and with problems of its own, the necessity for a similar realisation of the special province and role of primary education is not less imperative. The primary school is not a mere interlude between the infant school and the later stages of education, nor is its quality to be judged by its success in preparing children to proceed to the latter. It is continuous with both, because life is continuous, and it must
be careful, accordingly, to preserve close contact with both. But just as each phase of life has its special characteristics, so the primary school has its special opportunities, problems, and difficulties; and these it must encounter by developing its own methods, perfecting its own technique and establishing more firmly its own standards of achievement and excellence. Its criterion must above all be the requirements of its pupils during the years when they are in its charge, not the exigencies of examinations or the demands of the schools and occupations which they will eventually enter. It will best serve their future by a single-minded devotion to their needs in the present, and the question which most concerns it is not what children should be-a point on which unanimity has hardly yet, perhaps, been reached-but what, in actual fact, children are. Its primary aim must be to aid children, while they are children, to be healthy and, so far as is possible, happy children, vigorous in body and lively in mind, in order that later, as with widening experience they grow towards maturity, the knowledge which life demands may more easily be mastered and the necessary accomplishments more readily acquired…. During the last forty years, and with increasing rapidity in the twelve years since 1918, the outlook of the primary school has been broadened and humanised. To-day it includes care, through the school medical service, for the physical welfare of children, offers larger, if still inadequate, opportunities for practical activity, and handles the curriculum, not only as consisting of lessons to be mastered, but as providing fields of new and interesting experience to be explored; it appeals less to passive obedience and more to the sympathy, social spirit and imagination of the children, relies less on mass instruction and more on the encouragement of individual and group work, and treats the school, in short, not as the antithesis of life, but as its complement and commentary.
