Crowther (1959)

Volume I Report

Preliminary pages (i-xxxi)
Membership, Contents, Preface

Part 1 Education in a Changing World
Chapter 1 (1-15)
Sixty years of growth
Chapter 2 (16-27)
The pattern of secondary education
Chapter 3 (28-35)
Population changes and their educational consequences
Chapter 4 (36-44)
Changing social needs
Chapter 5 (45-53)
The pressure of economic change
Chapter 6 (54-60)
Burdens and benefits

Part 2 The Development of the Modern School
Chapter 7 (63-71)
The demand for a longer school life
Chapter 8 (72-89)
Extended courses and external examinations
Chapter 9 (90-101)
The consequences of extended courses for the Modern School

Part 3 'Secondary Education for All'
Chapter 10 (105-107)
The Act of 1944
Chapter 11 (108-116)
Why the SLA should be raised:
1. Individual benefit
Chapter 12 (117-134)
Why the SLA should be raised:
2. National interest
Chapter 13 (135-142)
The duration of secondary school life
Chapter 14 (143-146)
SLA or County College: The problem of priority
Chapter 15 (147-159)
When the SLA should be raised

Part 4 The Way to County Colleges
Chapter 16 (163-172)
A majority without education
Chapter 17 (173-180)
The purpose of a County College
Chapter 18 (181-196)
The way to County Colleges

Part 5 The Sixth Form
Chapter 19 (199-205)
The ablest boys and girls
Chapter 20 (206-221)
The approach to the sixth form
Chapter 21 (222-225)
The marks of a sixth form
Chapter 22 (226-232)
The sixth formers
Chapter 23 (233-245)
The staff of the sixth form
Chapter 24 (246-256)
The structure of sixth forms
Chapter 25 (257-282)
The curriculum of the sixth form
Chapter 26 (283-301)
The problem of university entrance
Chapter 27 (302-309)
Sixth forms with a difference

Part 6 Technical Challenge and Educational Response
Chapter 28 (313-317)
Neglected educational territory
Chapter 29 (318-331)
The system of further education
Chapter 30 (332-345)
Characteristics of further education
Chapter 31 (346-364)
The effectiveness of part-time courses
Chapter 32 (365-370)
Principles of expansion
Chapter 33 (371-379)
Beginning further education
Chapter 34 (380-390)
The problem of time
Chapter 35 (391-399)
The alternative road
Appendix to Part 6 (400-403)
Note on agriculture

Part 7 Institutions and Teachers
Chapter 36 (407-426)
Changing patterns in organisation
Chapter 37 (427-446)
The Teachers
Chapter 38 (447-475)
Summary of principal conclusions and recommendations

Appendices
Appendix I (476-483)
List of witnesses
Appendix II (484-485)
Minor examinations
Appendix III (486-505)
Technical education and vocational training in Europe

Glossary (506-513)
Index (514-519)

Volume II Surveys

Preliminary pages (i-xviii)
Preface, Notes on Tables

Part 1 The Social Survey
Introduction (1-10)
Contents, Introduction
Chapter 1 (11-33)
Home background and factors affecting age on leaving school
Chapter 2 (34-54)
Employment record of school-leavers
Chapter 3 (55-80)
Further education
Chapter 4 (81-98)
Leisure time interests and activities

Part 2 The National Service Survey
Introduction (99-115)
Contents, Introduction
Chapter 1 (116-137)
Ability, school and family, school leaving
Chapter 2 (138-153)
Further education and vocational training
Chapter 3 (154-165)
Earnings and occupations
Chapter 4 (166-174)
Leisure activities
Appendix (175-182)
Technical note on chart on p. 125

Part 3 The Technical Courses Survey
Introduction (183-187)
Contents, Introduction
Chapter 1 (188-193)
The design of the survey
Chapter 2 (194-206)
Notes on the tables
Chapter 3 (207-236)
The method of estimating and the reliability of the estimates

Index of Tables (237-240)

A report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England)

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1959
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Notes on the text

The Crowther Report was published in two volumes. Volume I (1959) is the Report itself, while Volume II (1960) contains three suporting surveys. The full texts of both volumes are online.

There were very few spelling mistakes in the report - I've corrected those I spotted. But there were many misplaced speechmarks, some unnecessary apostrophes (as in 1960's), inconsistent capitalisation, and excessive use of the hyphen both for dividing words (teen-ager etc) and for separating phrases. I have left all these as printed.

The formatting of the text (bold, italics, centred etc) is a reasonably accurate representation of the printed version. However, please note that the pages presented here are not exact facsimiles of the original printed version: 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.

Anything I've added by way of explanation is shown [in square brackets].

Pre-decimal currency

Before decimalisation in 1971, the UK's currency consisted of pounds, shillings and pence, shown, for example, as £5. 10s. 6d. The pound was divided into 20 shillings, the shilling into twelve pence. In some of the tables in Volume II incomes are shown in shillings. Thus 81s. would today be £4.05; 96s. would be £4.80.

Volume II also contains some mathematical symbols and formulae beyond my ability to render in HTML, so I have shown these as images. I have used full stops to indicate decimal points.

The tables

In all the reports I have previously put online I have rendered most of the tables in HTML. For the Crowther report I have presented the tables as images of the original. This uses more disk space but has enabled me to get the report online more quickly (creating tables in HTML is a long and complicated business!). If you have any comments on this change - positive or negative - let me know. Contact details are here.

A few of the larger tables and diagrams are shown in the text as links. Clicking on one opens a new window displaying the relevant table or diagram.

'Modern schools'

Crowther frequently refers to 'modern schools'. This means secondary modern schools, which were set up in the wake of the 1944 Education Act to cater for children who 'failed' the 11 plus exam and were not selected to go to grammar or technical schools. Secondary modern schools therefore catered largely for children of average or below average ability.