Secondary Modern School Research Articles

Inclusion: on the move?

Mike Gordon is an ex‐president of the former National Association for Remedial Education (NARE), now NASEN. He began his teaching career in 1958 in a boys' secondary modern school in Hull. Following national service (1960–62) and a posting in Malaya, he was given responsibility for an ‘Opportunity Class’ in a co‐educational secondary modern. He was fortunate to be seconded in 1966–7 to do Alec William's (great guru) Diploma in the Education of Handicapped Children course. He was then appointed Head of Remedial Studies in a new comprehensive school in Hull. From 1970–73 Mike was a lecturer in Hull College of Education but left to teach in a social priority primary school for five years. He then moved to Scarborough to lead the area learning support service team before becoming North Yorkshire's Head of Special Teaching Support Services. In the early 1970s he obtained a Diploma in Education and an M.Ed. After retiring in 1997 he was NASEN's media officer and was then appointed as the Association's first Executive Secretary in 1999.

Analysis of National Value‐added Datasets to Assess the Impact of Selection on Pupil Performance

AbstractThe impact of selective education systems on pupil performance has long been a contentious issue, but the advent of national value‐added datasets linking performance across key stages for the majority of pupils in England has enabled detailed analysis to throw some light on the issues. The main finding has been a distinct difference in Key Stage 3 test levels for pupils on the ‘borderline’ between grammar school and secondary modern school, even when prior attainment is taken into account. Possible explanations for this apparent ‘grammar school effect’ are discussed.

Schulabgänger ohne Hauptschulabschluss


 
 
 This rise in the number of complaints coming both from entrepreneurs and from business organisations about the unsatisfactory levels of education displayed by school-leavers suggests a failure to match the increased demand for „human capital„ with sufficient supply of the right quality. One indicator of this problem is the rise since the beginning of the 1990s — both in absolute terms and proportionately — in the number of young people leaving school without even minimal qualifications — i.e. the certificate of achievement awarded by secondary modern schools, the so-called Hauptschulabschluss. Young males are almost twice as likely to fall into this category as young females; in eastern Germany young Germans are more likely to leave school without qualifications than in the west of the country. The disparities among the various Länder cannot be accounted for satisfactorily solely by reference to per capita spending or class size. Within the three Länder subjected to closer examination, Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Brandenburg, there are striking differences from county to county in the percentage of school-leavers who have failed to attain the Hauptschulabschluss. Among a number of different variables which may be assumed to have produced these regional disparities, one which appears to contribute to lowering the proportion of young people leaving school without qualifications is the range of educational opportunities available in a particular county. Counties which consistently record above-average rates for male school-leavers without qualifications are called upon to respond through appropriate educational policies.
 
 
 
 
 

Defending History in the Classroom

1 St Giles School, Croydon

Challenge, Response and Dilution: a revisionist view of the Emergency Training Scheme for Teachers, 1945‐1951

Between 1945 and 1951 the Emergency Training Scheme produced around 35,000 teachers, selected mainly on the grounds of personality rather than paper qualifications and trained in just one year. Most of these teachers subsequently found posts in primary or secondary modern schools, where many enjoyed successful careers. Without this scheme, the raising of the school leaving age to 15 and the 1944 Education Act's promise of ‘secondary education for all’ would both have been greatly delayed. Of the published accounts of the scheme, most focus upon notions of ‘challenge’ and ‘response’, without confronting the important associated issue of professional dilution. Drawing upon a range of previously unused evidence, this paper offers a revisionist view.

Staying Ahead: The Middle Class and School Reform in England and Wales

This article analyzes the reform in England and Wales that changed the secondary school system from a selective type (with grammar and secondary modern schools) to a comprehensive type during the period 1965-74. It presents evidence of two possible middle-class tactics : resistance to the reform and using the reform to protect the middle-class advantage. Resistance took the forms of keeping grammar schools from being transformed into comprehensives and maintaining high middle-class enrollments in grammar schools and in private schools. Organizing the comprehensive system to the advantage of the middle class involved establishing some comprehensives without sixth forms and making it less likely that middle-class children would attend them. Enrollment patterns of a national sample are used to show how the middle class retained an advantage even as the types of schools were being changed

Spreektoetsen Moderne Vreemde Talen

In 1988 CITO started research into the feasibility of valid and reliable oral proficiency tests based on communicative principles. This was to meet the demand for a communicative speech test to be used in school based examinations in secondary education. Using the Test of Spoken English as a guideline, tests for French, German and English were developed. Simultaneous research into the reliability and validity of the tests led to various adaptations of the original model. From 1992 onwards oral proficiency tests for each of the three languages in question have been published at levels VBO/MAVO, HAVO and VWO (approxi-mately: vocational, secondary modern and grammar school). The results of a user inquiry held in 1994 led to a number of further changes to improve the user-friend-liness of the tests. Early in 1996 a new research project concerning the reliability and validity of the tests was started. The results will be published in the autumn of 1996.

Encouraging License and Insolence in the Classroom: imagining a pedagogic shift

ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with the difficulties of trying to discern changes in classroom practice in the past. Its focus is on past pedagogy and ways of studying it. It is part of a continuing project on the silent social history of the classroom and the paper is used as an opportunity to raise questions about collecting data and validating a methodology for this project. In the relative absence of teacher accounts of pedagogy in their elementary classrooms the images or discourses of education form another avenue by which to explore the classroom actuality. These images of teaching allow a tension or contradiction to develop in which the struggles over pedagogy may emerge. It views critically, within a case study of the changes in postwar elementary schooling, a possible pedagogic shift in the secondary modern school and begins to provide a critique of curriculum history theorising.

Towards a social history of the secondary modern schools

(1994). Towards a social history of the secondary modern schools. History of Education: Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 275-286.

Reform of physics Curriculum in a West German Secondary Modern School (Hauptschule)

Reform of physics Curriculum in a West German Secondary Modern School (Hauptschule)

Henshaw's: from School to Independence Centre

This article outlines the development of Henshaw's from a secondary modern school for blind pupils to a post-16 residential college for less able visually impaired students. It also describes briefly plans for the wider role of the college as a regional resource offering a range of support services.

Teachers' Perceptions of Pupils' Behaviour Problems at a Comprehensive School

AbstractThis study sought to explore teachers' perceptions of pupils' behaviour problems at a single comprehensive school. Sixty‐four teachers at the school rated a list of 23 behaviour problems in terms of their seriousness. The findings indicated that the teachers' perceptions were dominated by disruptive behaviours, although ‘under‐achieving’ by pupils was a major cause of concern. A principal components analysis identified three major factors: problems describing aggressive and antagonistic personality traits, problems relating to difficulties in application to school work, and problems relating to difficulties with authority. A particularly interesting finding was that teachers who had previously taught in a grammar school tended to rate the behaviour problems as more serious than colleagues who had previously taught in a secondary modern school. As well as contributing to the understanding of how teachers perceive the notion of behaviour problems, these findings also have implications for staff development at the school.

Consensus Amongst a Putative Elite: Some Empirical Findings

Surveys children from 7 English public schools and state school children from Grammar, Secondary Modern and Comprehensive schools. Demonstrates that some groups are attitudinally homogenous and that their background is privileged in terms of attaining elite positions. If they achieve such positions they are likely to be in broad accord with others who are similarly successful. When state children achieve anything like attitudinal homogeneity it is often on items suggesting political passivity.

Psychological aspects of temporal dominance during adolescence.

To evaluate several assumptions regarding the development of time orientation during adolescence the circles test was administered to different age groups ( M = 13.8 yr.; M = 17.7 yr.; M = 23.3 yr.). Data for this cross-sectional analysis were collected from a sample of 962 German male and female adolescents (secondary modern and vocational schools, teachers' college). The findings show an effect of age, but not of sex-role influences on temporal dominance; especially the data yielded a decrease of future dominance and an increase in present dominance during adolescence. An interpretation for these results may be found in Lewin's 1946 theory of the “reality-irreality” dimension of time perspective.

An investigation into the aspirations, employment prospects and alternatives for a group of 16 year old school leavers in the city of Gloucester

Abstract This study was an investigation into the career aspirations and eventual placements of a sample group of school leavers in Gloucester. The sample numbered 222 pupils, evenly divided between girls and boys who represented two grammar schools, two comprehensive schools and two secondary modern schools. The method of enquiry was in two stages. The first was to record aspirations of the sample by questionnaires distributed in September 1983, December 1983 and March 1984 of their last year of compulsory education. The second stage was to record and collate the placements of the sample in employment, further education, YTS or otherwise.

The Challenge for the Comprehensive School, Culture, Curriculum and Community

By 1982 the ambitious claims made for newly established comprehensive schools were being put to the test. How effectively does the comprehensive meet the needs of all young people? Do urban, working-class students enjoy more success than in the secondary modern schools? Are they more engaged in their learning with higher self-esteem? This volume discusses these questions and examines issues of social mobility and cohesion, curriculum, the balance between academic and vocational education, the place of exams in the educational system and the influence of independent schools. The author asks whether a more decentralised system of self-governing schools improve the education service – a timely question which along with the other issues examined is as relevant and challenging today as when the book was originally published in 1982.

Self‐recording as a Means of Improving Classroom Behaviour in the Secondary School

Two experiments are reported in which children's study behaviour was manipulated systematically within a behavioural paradigm. Both studies were carried out in the remedial department of a large, modern Secondary school in England by a woman teacher. The first involved an individual, a boy whose study behaviour was controlled using self‐recording in a reversal design. On‐task behaviour increased whilst maladaptive responses were reduced and there was a pronounced improvement in the boy's attitude to school work. The second study was a group intervention employing self‐recording which was again successful in improving the on‐task behaviour rate. At the same time it proved possible to gain measures which show clear evidence of improvement in both the quality and quantity of written work produced by the group. In both studies there was some evidence of generalisation of effects.

Progression Through School: a study of the school careers of secondary modern girls

AbstractIn this paper a new approach to the study of organisations is suggested, one that focuses on the organisation in terms of the meaning that organisation members find within it. In the following account I have used this approach to examine school from the pupil's perspective. The major concepts that are employed are career, career segment and career pattern. The term ‘career’ is open to objection because of possible ambiguity. It is, however, a convenient term and no difficulty should be caused if it is borne in mind that it relates to what happens in the school and not what happens after. I have drawn on my own research at Rushel Secondary Modern School to illustrate the analysis.

Support your physics teacher

Many congratulations to Brian Woolnough on his article 'Support your local physics teacher' (Physics Bulletin May 1978 p203). As a practising physics teacher of 19 years spent jointly in secondary modern and comprehensive schools the article has my complete support confirming (happily) many of my answers to parents' questions on mixed ability teaching in the first two years and the interest of children for science subjects.

Teaching the Music of Six Different Cultures in the Modern Secondary School

Teaching the Music of Six Different Cultures in the Modern Secondary School