ABSTRACT
Within education, the relationship between sociological research and proposals for educational policy was never more clearly demonstrated than in the Plowden Committee’s recommendations for the establishment of educational priority areas. Drawing on sociological research and the findings of their own national survey (pp. 206-10), the Committee acknowledged the ‘central’ role played by schools in disadvantaged areas, either in helping maintain a ‘vicious circle’ of ‘cumulative deprivation’, or in helping create a ‘virtuous circle’ of increased parental interest in education and higher standards of performance from children. In the passage below the Committee makes very strong claims for the importance of the primary school in combatting disadvantage: ‘What these deprived areas need most are perfectly normal, good primary schools alive with experience from which children of all kinds can benefit.’ Arguments are then advanced for ‘positive discrimination’ for schools in areas of educational priority and for both an increase in, and a redistribution of, resources devoted to education to help achieve this priority.
