Changing Views on Primary Education

Abstract

The period since World War II has seen the rise of what has been called the “progressive” movement in primary education. This approach has been contrasted with the traditional approach which was characterised by a more formal organisation, by teacher-directed lessons and by an emphasis upon instruction in the basic skills. Schools organised on these lines have been described as places of “cells and bells” i.e. places in which children worked in so many separate classroom boxes (cells) and changed subjects at a given signal (the bell). The “progressive” schools have a less structured programme, are child-centred and may be “open plan” in their architecture with 3 or 4 teachers organising the learning of perhaps 120 children in one large space. The report Children and their Primary Schools (H.M.S.O. 1967) produced by a committee headed by Lady Plowden praised the approach of the “progressives” and has been taken as marking the high water point of the movement.