Children, their World, their Education: Final Report and Recommendations of the Cambridge Primary Review*

Children, their World, their Education: Final Report and Recommendations of the Cambridge Primary Review By Alexander Robin J ( ed . ) London : Routledge , 2010 ISBN 9780415548717 , 586 pp, £35.00 (pb) Very early in this massive volume readers are warned against turning too soon to the end, because ‘the conclusions and recommendations are not all that matters’ (p. 9). No less important are the analysis and arguments within the body of the Review, because whatever happens to the recommendations, whether they are rejected or acted upon, the importance of the Review, its ‘alternative ways of thinking and talking about primary education’ (p. 2), its pursuit of fundamental principles, including equity, entitlement and engagement, will remain for ‘discussion and debate into the longer term’ (p. 9). This is a most welcome conclusion in itself: the time is long overdue for some serious thinking, argument and counter-argument, about the way we live now in primary education. This overall purpose is reinforced in a short postscript by the editor, Robin Alexander, written some months after the main text went to press, in which he declares that the Cambridge Primary Review stands out with the politics of the moment; it is to be seen as ‘an exercise in democratic engagement as well as empirical enquiry and visionary effort’. Brave words indeed, especially in the face of the wild and sensationalising headlines that greeted the publication of the interim reports. But the authors have remained cool under fire. There is to be no wild rumpus, but continuing debate and discussion. In which spirit let us proceed. In a report of this length, which has a great deal to say about almost every conceivable aspect of primary education in England, any reader is bound to find sections to welcome with open arms, and others that will be greeted with disappointment and dismay. Readers with a taste for the educational history of the 20th century are especially well catered for, in stirring pages that may persuade younger teachers that primary education did not begin in 1997 with the landslide election victory of new labour. The Review reverently quotes the late, great historian of education, Brian Simon, who maintained that ‘only historical analysis can throw light on the changing forms of primary education’; passages in Chapters 3, 12 and 13 do much to bear out his claim. Another strength of the Review is its willingness to ask some of the very big questions, including ‘What is primary education for?’‘What should children learn?’‘How might matters be differently ordered?’ These questions, and many, many more, are painstakingly examined with the aid of a wealth of expert witnesses, the distinguished authors of the 28 research surveys commissioned by the Review team. Recent history also lends a hand; so, for example, in examining what children should learn, the Review systematically and satisfactorily demolishes the false dichotomy between ‘the basics’ and ‘the rest’, which Alexander (1984) had already brilliantly elucidated in a discussion of what he calls Curriculum I and Curriculum II. To back up this argument, the Review reminds us that the most successful schools have long been, and still are, those with the broadest and richest curriculum. High standards in the so-called basics go hand in hand with breadth and balance. HMI and Ofsted evidence, in reports from 1978, 1985, 1997 and 2002, is crystal clear; ‘if breadth is sacrificed, so are standards’ (p. 215). This is a crucial plank in the Review’s argument and it is admirable that the authors are prepared to repeat the point, both earlier (p. 36) and later (p. 243). Building on this incontrovertible evidence, the Review argues that quality is a cross-curricular issue; the point is so important that it is italicised: ‘a truly whole curriculum is one where the quality and seriousness of the teaching are consistently high across all its aspects’. And quite right too; raising the number of level 4 results in the year 6 SATS, as headteachers are daily urged to do by their School Improvement Partners, is no substitute for a flourishing school orchestra or fertile allotment. Inevitably, even in a Review as comprehensive as this, there are gaps and absences. For example, Chapter 8, ‘Children, diversity and equity’, concludes that much still needs to be performed to ensure that children who ‘are in some way different’ are not also disadvantaged, but manages to do so without examining the literature on discrimination, ‘race’ and racism (three terms that do not appear in the index). A typically cautious sub-heading in this chapter, ‘The influences of ethnicity’, appears to locate the origins of discrimination within its victims, thereby ignoring what two courageous researchers, studying an ethnically diverse daycare centre in the USA, have called ‘The First R’ (Van Ausdale & Feagin, 2001). Chapters 14 and 15, which examine alternatives to current models of curriculum and pedagogy, omit some strong candidates for consideration. The New Zealand early childhood curriculum, for example, as laid out in the bilingual document Te Whariki (Ministry of Education, 1996), is based on four agreed principles — agreed, as educators in this country enviously note, across the whole spectrum of agencies and ethnic groups who provide early care and education — and five breath-takingly simple ‘strands’ of learning and development: belonging, well-being, exploration, communication and contribution. Another omission is the work of Nel Noddings, professor of education at the University of Stanford, CA, mathematician, feminist and author of a powerful re-formulation of education as we know it: The Challenge to Care in Schools: An Alternative Approach to Education. Noddings’ curriculum model, based on the powerful concept of care, is rooted in the principle that the main aim of education is a moral one: ‘to produce competent, caring, loving and lovable people’. Anticipating her critics, Noddings adds: ‘There is nothing mushy about caring. It is the strong resilient backbone of human life’ (Noddings, 2005: 174–5). These are all ideas worth thinking about, surely. As a life-long opponent of setting, streaming and all their variations, I studied the sections on these forms of classroom organisation with particular care. Chapter 15 summarises the findings of research survey 9/2, which examines the available evidence on the subject, and comes down squarely in favour of abandoning these practices, as there ‘are no consistent effects of structured ability grouping … on attainment’. In a later chapter, no fewer than six further studies are reviewed, all showing different, damaging effects of setting. So I was dismayed to find that, despite the weight of this evidence, there are no specific recommendations on the issue; the Review concludes, pusillanimously, that setting and streaming ‘need to be used with caution’ (p. 378). To conclude on a more positive note: I have spent the last 20 years teaching on continuing professional development courses for teachers and other educators, searching for the most effective ways of supporting them as independent, reflective, questioning professionals — a search made ever more difficult during decades of official surveillance and accountability, combined with mandated pedagogy for literacy and numeracy. So I deeply appreciate both the authority and the severity with which the Review treats all these manifestations of national control, showing how they amount to a ‘state theory of learning’. The authors condemn these attacks on teachers’ professionalism, and are equally outspoken about the only effective antidote: brave teachers, who think for themselves. Indeed, if I am ever re-incarnated as a primary teacher, I may well take as my motto this single splendid sentence from the Review: ‘Pupils will not learn to think for themselves if their teachers are expected to do as they are told’ (p. 308).