The Plowden Report and Its Impact on School Curriculum

The [best] school lays special stress on individual discovery, on first hand experience and on opportunities for creative work. It insists that knowledge does not fall into neatly separated compartments and that work and play are not opposite but complementary.' This except from the Plowden Report, Children and their Primary Schools, (1967) was perhaps destined to have the greatest impact on education in the latter 20^th century, but in its time was labeled as trendy and left wing, of no used to the practical problems faced by education in the 1960s. But this simple statement laid forth the foundations for an educational system that would focus on the needs of the student, as opposed to the needs of the educational system that had held fast for many years.

When this report was published, it was the first large scale report on British primary schools since the Hadow Report on Primary education in 1931 and on nursery and infants schools in 1933. The Plowden report was maligned by the government as being detrimental to society and an undermining of the foundation of education as a whole. Rather the report highlighted the problems facing the educational sector that were draining not only financial and human resources, but were turning out under-educated and unprepared young people.

The Plowden Report recommended certain points that could enhance the education given to pupils and take some of the pressures off the educational system as a whole. Among the recommendations that the report emphasized were:

Reducing the size of classes to a comfortable level, not to exceed a given maximum

That lessons be structured to individual, group and class work, but to place a greater emphasis on individual learning

To recruit more teachers helpers/aide

To study the needs/achievements of gifted children to structure educational programs for this group

Flexibility in the school day and year

Teachers trained in and able to use technological advances

Making the child the center of the educational process, not the outer edge of it

To give teachers more say in what is taught