HMI Secondary Survey (1979)

(page numbers in brackets)

Preliminary pages (i-viii)
Contents, List of Tables

Introduction (1-3)

Part I Information about the schools in the survey

Chapter 1 (4-5)
The nature and conduct of the survey
Chapter 2 (6-12)
The schools in the sample
Chapter 3 (13-43)
Curricular provision
Chapter 4 (44-66)
Staffing and deployment of teachers

Part II Assessments and findings

Chapter 5 (67-70)
The assessments
Chapter 6 (71-110)
Language
Chapter 7 (111-163)
Mathematics
Chapter 8 (164-205)
Science
Chapter 9 (206-240)
Personal and social development
Chapter 10 (241-250)
Public examinations (at age 16)
Chapter 11 (251-259)
Pupils' behaviour - some special problems

Part III

Chapter 12 (260-264)
General reflections
Chapter 13 (265-270)
Looking forward

Glossary (271-275)

Appendix 1 (276-294)
The forms used in the survey
Appendix 2 (295-300)
Statistical appendix
Appendix 3 (301-305)
Further aspects of statistical evidence
Appendix 4 (306-307)
Gifted pupils

Index (308-312)

London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office 1979
© Crown copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland.

Notes on the text

Background

The 1967 Plowden Report Children and their Primary Schools recommended (in chapter 30, page 426, para. 1164) that surveys of the quality of primary schools should be conducted at least once every ten years.

In response, HMI produced, between 1978 and 1985, five surveys covering the whole school age range, of which this survey was one. The others in the series were:

1978 Primary education in England
1982 Education 5 to 9
1983 9-13 Middle Schools
1985 Education 8 to 12 in Combined and Middle Schools

The full text of the survey is online, including the Appendices.

The tables are presented here as images. Most of these are embedded in the text, but a handful of larger tables (and some whole pages in Appendix 1) are shown as links: clicking on one opens a new window displaying the relevant table.

A correction slip, relating to page 11, paragraph 7.2, line two, was inserted in the front of the report: this correction has been made in the text presented here. I found a couple of dozen typing errors, which I have corrected, and I have also tidied up some inconsistencies in spelling - judgement/judgment, cooperation/co-operation, for example. The former were used more often in each case and are therefore used throughout in this version. Both double and single speech marks were used in the report, and I have left these as printed.

I've added one brief note of explanation [in square brackets] - but these were also used on a number of occasions in the report itself.

Layout

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.

I have also changed the layout of the pages. The printed report included a wide margin in which were printed the sub-headings and footnotes. For this online version, sub-headings have been incorporated into the body of the text, and footnotes have been moved to their usual position at the bottom of each page.

As an example, here is page 14 as printed in the original:

And here is how it is rendered online: