ABSTRACT
This short piece summarizes the Hadow Committee’s conclusions for the reorganization of elementary education into two successive stages: primary education and post-primary education. The reorganization was proposed, not mainly for the benefit of primary-aged children, but in order to cater more appropriately for the ‘tide’ of adolescence. Eleven was chosen as the age marking the end of primary and the beginning of post-primary education. The last part of the extract discusses the kind of examination to be given children of 11 to ‘discover in each case the type [of school] most suitable to a child’s abilities and interests’. This ‘11 + ‘ examination was to have a dominating, and largely restrictive, influence on the upper primary curriculum for many decades post-Hadow, and still exercises such an influence in some parts of the country.
