Published: 09 October 2000
Death Of An Unsung Heroine
The death of Lady Plowden a few days ago marked a sad end to an impressive achievement. Bridget Plowden was the Chair of the Central Advisory Council for Education, which produced the two volume Plowden Report (HMSO 1967) under the title ‘Children and their Primary Schools’.
Why a sad end? Because this impressive Report laid the foundations for most that is good in primary education today, much that is good about modern education generally. Yet, over the last two decades, the Report has been repeatedly vilified: by politicians of the Right for being allegedly trendy left, and by politicians of the New Left for being overly liberal.
The Report was neither. It held a balanced review of what was known about how children learn, a compassionate overview of what family and society needed from its schools. It was clear-sighted in its understanding about what makes a successful education, years ahead of its time in proposing educational reform. It was long (volume 1 had 556 pages), so very few people read it, but all became instant – and often misguided – experts on it.
Here are some of the principles that Lady Plowden’s report advocated:
The maximum size of primary classes should be reduced
A combination of individual, group and class work, and a welcome for the trend towards individual learning
(On teachers’ aides) a somewhat more generous recruitment of them in the educational priority areas…in ten years 77,000 aides and assistants
Long term studies to be made on the needs and achievements of gifted children
Flexibility in the length of the school day and the spacing of the school year should be encouraged
Teachers best equipped to use the latest technical aids on their teaching.
Does this sound like the stuff of revolution? In 1967 it probably was. Was it the stuff of trendy leftism? Hardly. Of course, the Report did advocate the use of discovery learning, first-hand experience, environmental awareness, interdisciplinary approaches, and group work as ways of capturing pupils’ imagination. But not exclusively, not without an eye to achievement, and not in an uncritical or laissez-faire manner. The accusations of leftism and liberalism are just not true of Plowden; though they may have been true of some of her more ignorant followers. Before and since, the best educational researchers have established the Plowden principles: cf. Rousseau, Dewey, the Social Constructivists, Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development, and the work of Bruner to name only the more obvious.
The utterances of most politicians rarely survive the scrutiny of 30 months, let alone 33 years. Few official documents about education have evinced as much common sense or had as much influence for good as Plowden. There is hardly a ‘modern’ initiative that has not been anticipated by Plowden. So the time has come for Neo-Plowdenism.
Plowden would have relished the debates about four, five or six term school years as a contribution to an intelligent discussion on making the needs of families more integral to the provision in school. Plowden would have rejoiced to see the proliferation of teaching support staff: not just NNEBs (as she would have conceived them), but librarians, technical support officers, EWOs and so on. Plowden would have embraced information and communications technology because it gives pupils the opportunity to become independent learners, controlling how, when and where they learn. Plowden anticipated Excellence in Cities by thirty years. Plowden understood the need to meet the needs of pupils with impoverished backgrounds, of pupils in rural schools and of ill-equipped schools: problems still not tackled adequately in our much more affluent society. Plowden supported the work of the Schools Council, which placed the control of curriculum firmly in the hands of teachers; and came close to pointing the need for improved Literacy training.
The Plowden Report – the real one, not the imaginary one of the formal/informal debate – was a mine of common-sense and intelligent insight unequalled by any contemporary political pronouncement on education. For all those new teachers out there, too young to have been influenced by it, I would recommend its perusal. For those familiar with the real thing, I suggest an Neo-Plowdenesque revival against the forces of Reductionism, of targets, performance indicators and league tables.
Trevor Kerry is Research Professor in the International Educational Leadership Centre in the University of Lincolnshire and Humberside, and Senior Vice President of the College of Teachers.
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