ABSTRACT
At its simplest, primary education can be regarded as an administrative stage, set up as a result of the 1944 Education Act: The statutory system of public education shall be organized in three progressive stages to be known as primary education, secondary education and further education’. Primary education comprises beliefs and practices thought appropriate for children in a particular age-range. Primary education, however, is much more than an administrative entity. It is something experienced by millions of children over a number of years and conveyed through the intentions and actions of many thousands of teachers. Educational ideologies comprise different clusters of beliefs, values, principles, sentiments and understandings; they attempt to give meaning, and direction to the complex and diverse practical enterprise of teaching. They employ their own combinations of ideas and metaphors which give their adherents sense of what is ‘right’ for children in schools.
