Policy and Practice in Primary Education

Between 1985 and 1989 the city of Leeds spent #14 million on its primary schools, especially those in the deprived inner-city areas. At the end of this period, there were noticeable improvements in the conditions in which children were taught and often in the quality of the teaching they received, but the reading scores were marginally lower than they had been at the beginning and the gap in achievement between children in the inner city and those in the affluent suburbs was as great as it had ever been. Robin Alexander, head of the team which evaluated the Leeds project, here uses the Leeds example to consider the aims and direction of primary education today. In particular he examines the notion of "good practice" which has dominated the debate since the publication of the Plowden report in 1967. He argues that unquestioning acceptance of its basic tenets has led to a dangerous separation of rhetoric and practice and a failure of the very children it was intended to serve. Primary education will only improve, he concludes, when teachers themselves are allowed to define good practice according to what is possible in their own classrooms.
This book should be of interest to primary education, educational policy and curriculum studies.