HMI Report on Secondary Education 1979. The conclusions.

I’m writing a book on Talk for Teaching – hopefully out before Christmas and I thought I’d blog parts of the book as I write them and also any nuggets of research that I might find.

Aspects of Secondary Education. HMI report 1979. The conclusions

I was looking at how schools were inspected before 1975, the year I left secondary school (I know, you’d never guess ???). The reason is that I attended an all boys’ grammar school, where the teaching was characterised by the poorest quality direct instruction. Theres nothing wrong with direct instruction, as a teaching method and it is practiced in almost all classrooms, but to experience a diet which excluded any other form of instruction was, in the main……dreadful! Because of the standard of teaching, as I perceive it in hindsight, I wanted to know how schools were monitored at the time, as I don’t remember our school having any visits from inspectors. If inspectors came and went, we pupils weren’t aware – more later on both of these aspects) and I happened to stumble across this report by HMI from 1979 in the National archives (an unexpected and fascinating joy!). If you think the problems with the education system are modern ones, secondary teachers, think again. The almost complete lack of solutions that have been found in nearly 40 years to the problems identified in the late 1970’s (and that still exist today) almost beggars belief! There are links to all the reports 1978-85 here and I’ll blog about the 1978 primary one next.

Aspects of secondary education in England
A survey by HM Inspectors of Schools (1979)

London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office 1979
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen’s Printer for Scotland.

Writer’s Notes on the text

Background

The 1967 Plowden Report Children and their Primary Schoolsrecommended (in chapter 30, page 426, para. 1164) that surveys of the quality of primary schools should be conducted at least once every ten years.

In response, between 1978 and 1985 HMI produced five surveys covering the whole school age range:

1978 Primary education in England
1979 Aspects of secondary education in England
1982 Education 5 to 9
1983 9-13 Middle Schools
1985 Education 8 to 12 in Combined and Middle Schools

The secondary survey was planned as a series of inspections covering a ten per cent sample of maintained secondary schools. Between the autumn term 1975 and the end of the spring term 1978, 384 schools were visited: 97 secondary modern schools, 51 grammar schools, 208 comprehensives, and 28 schools which were in the process of becoming comprehensives.

The survey focused on four areas:

• the development of language skills, written and spoken;
• the development of mathematical understanding and competence;
• the development of scientific skills and understanding; and
• the personal and social development of the pupils and their general preparation for adult living.

The survey online

The full text of the survey, including the Appendices, is online in a single web page.

The tables and forms are presented as images, embedded in the text where they were in the printed version.

A correction slip, relating to page 11, paragraph 7.2, line two, was inserted in the front of the report: this correction has been made in the text presented here. I have corrected a couple of dozen typing errors and tidied up some inconsistencies in spelling – judgement/judgment, cooperation/co-operation, for example. The former were used more often in each case and are therefore used throughout in this version. Both double and single speech marks were used in the report, and I have left these as printed.

I’ve added one brief note of explanation [in square brackets] – but these were also used on a number of occasions in the report itself.

The printed report included a wide margin which contained the sub-headings and footnotes. For this online version, sub-headings have been incorporated into the body of the text, and footnotes have been moved to their usual position at the bottom of each page. Where there was more than one footnote on a page I have used the traditional footnote symbols.

The formatting of the text (bold, italics, centred etc) is a reasonably accurate representation of the printed version, but the pages presented here are not exact facsimiles of the original: the font (Times, Arial etc) and size of print – and therefore the number of words to a line and lines to a page – are determined by the settings you have chosen for your web browser. However, the page breaks are correct. In other words, if something is shown here as being on, say, page 103, you can be sure it appeared on page 103 in the original.

Summary of the survey’s conclusions:

1. in most schools, teachers and pupils alike work hard and make solid achievements;
2. given the large measure of self determination which schools enjoy, they appear remarkably similar in their broad characteristics;
3. a large range of options does not necessarily result in either a ‘balanced’ programme or one which has coherence for the pupil;
4. schools need to review cross-curricular work in language development, reading skills, health, careers, social and moral education, and preparation for life in a multi-racial society;
5. a more explicit rationale of the curriculum as a whole might make it easier to see how far it is realised or realisable in particular structures;
6. there are considerable inequalities between schools in staffing ratios and in the adequacy and appropriateness of teachers’ academic and professional qualifications;
7. in many schools existing science accommodation is insufficient to provide all pupils up to the age of 16 with a balanced programme;
8. many schools lack sufficient and appropriate books and library resources;
9. the style and quality of work in the fourth and fifth years (now years 9 and 10) were dominated by the requirements of public examinations;
10. pupils are not always gaining sufficient experience of organising their own learning;
11. if schools believe that their work is appreciated only as far as it is reflected in examination results, they will be tempted to subordinate all else;
12. public examinations have a part to play in the assessment and recording of achievement in the secondary school, but they cannot constitute an account of the whole educational experience, nor should they limit that experience;
13. there is room for improvement in day-to-day assessment, including more critical and constructive marking of written work;
14. regular and systematic evaluation of progress is needed if work is to be matched to pupils’ capacities;
15. the ablest pupils are not always sufficiently challenged;
16. collective thinking and planning are difficult to achieve, partly because of lack of time;
17. the traditional nature of the secondary curriculum defined by subject specialisms reinforces the habit of operating in isolation;
18. pupils need a broader programme of studies with a corresponding reduction in the number of ‘options’ and a limitation on the range from which they are drawn;
19. teacher preparation and professional development should be a continuing process embracing initial education and training, induction and in-service training;
20. schools cannot usefully proceed far in isolation – they need the support of local education authorities, teacher training institutions and the public.

The 1979 HMI Secondary Survey and the above notes were prepared for the web by Derek Gillard. The survey was uploaded on 4 June 2006; the revised notes on 6 November 2012.

It is truly amazing how the phrase “if you stay long enough in education, you’ll come full circle”. ??