ABSTRACT
As a landmark in the development of English primary education, Children and Their Primary Schools (the Plowden Report) features in several places in this volume. Pages 89-90 discuss the ‘recognisable philosophy of education’ with which the report has been associated; pages 206-10 refer to the importance the report attached to the home and, in particular, to parental attitudes, and pages 211-13 feature its proposals for educational priority areas. Here, there is a brief extract from the report’s concluding chapter, the first section of which attempts a review of developments since the Second World War. The report is emphatic about the degree of progress which has been achieved: ‘Our review is a report of progress and a spur to more ... in the report we have for the most part described English primary education at its best. That in our belief is very good indeed. Only rarely is it very bad. The average is good.’ Though making passing reference to the ‘moral dismal corners of primary education’, the report is optimistic and confident — so much so that a questionable assertion is paraded as unchallengeable truth: ‘ “Finding out” has proved to be better for children than “being told”.’ The publication of the Plowden Report represented the high water mark in the fortunes of primary education post-Hadow. Neither before nor since have primary schools and, in particular, primary teachers received so much support and approval for their policies and practices.
