ABSTRACT
The HMI primary survey, featured in the previous extract, was the first publicly accessible, rigorous professional appraisal of developments in primary education since the changes set in train by the Hadow Report of 1931 (see pp. 25-8). As this extract argues, the survey did much to strip primary education of its myths, both favourable and unfavourable. The picture it painted was one of organizational rather than curricular or pedagogic change: a perspective very different from the views of either primary education’s detractors or sympathizers. Many of the previous papers in this section dealt in visions, in prescriptions, or in criticisms (often based on very partial evidence). The survey provided much needed information to correct Utopian or simplistic perspectives. It provided an agenda for professional discussion and renewal, based on closer knowledge of primary policy and practice.
