Timetables: Happy hours and happy days

Production team Fans of television comedy may remember Jack Dee's programme Happy Hour. For those who missed it, it is worth explaining that it wasn't an hour long, neither did it make all the viewers happy. Anyone who has had recent contact with primary schools in England will also have heard about hours in the shape of the literacy and numeracy hours. The Literacy Hour is an hour long, unlike the Happy Hour, with guidance to teachers specifying how the hour should be divided up. There is also detailed guidance of what should be taught to pupils of given ages. Although the term Numeracy Hour is in common use, the official term is Daily Mathematics Lesson, which is supposed to last about forty-five minutes for infants and between fifty and sixty minutes for juniors. Strong recommendations are made about how mathematics lessons should be structured, starting with oral and mental work. Details are also given about the work likely to be covered by children of given ages.

A recent report shows that, by the end of primary school, pupils are spending about half their lesson time on English and Mathematics. There is less prescription about how the rest of the school day should be structured, though no shortage of lists of things to be covered. In many cases it is likely that much of the school day will be divided into lessons where it is clear which subject is being taught.

The structure described above is relatively new, yet it sounds surprisingly familiar. Most fictional accounts of classrooms, from Dickens to the Beano, have children sitting in rows and being taught subjects formally. Some writers are more imaginative, with Lewis Carroll's work, for example, suggesting that lessons were so-called 'because they lessen from day to day' and that mathematics had four important components: 'ambition, distraction, uglification and derision'. The real system in Victorian times was, not surprisingly, closer to the picture of Dickens than that of Carroll. Over the years the school curriculum developed and - hopefully - teachers became more sympathetic than those Dickens portrayed. Nevertheless, a system based on lessons and formal instruction persisted in English primary schools till well after the Second World War.

Production team It was during the 1960s and 70s that things began to change. One influence on this was the Plowden report in 1967 with its famous quote 'at the heart of the educational process lies the child'. The report also favoured an integrated curriculum, on the grounds that children's learning does not fit into subject categories. Changes about this time included assigning work to individuals or groups rather than to the whole class, as well as sometimes allowing children to pursue studies related to their own interests. This in turn led to different ways of organising the school day where children were often working in groups on different subjects at the same time or working on 'topics' which crossed subject boundaries. There was still wide variation between schools and in practice most teachers probably used a mixture of teaching methods as appropriate. Although in some quarters this period is looked back on as a time dominated by progressive methods and liberalism, the reality is probably much more mixed, just as terms like 'progressive' and 'traditional' can be unhelpful.

In the last twenty years or so, several things have happened to change both opinions and practice as far as the organisation of primary schools is concerned. One important factor was the introduction of the National Curriculum in 1988, which laid down what children at various ages should be taught. The fact that the National Curriculum content was prescribed by subject meant that one clear option was to teach it in subject-based lessons. A few years after the introduction of the National Curriculum, there was an influential report about the organisation of primary classrooms, which is commonly referred to as the Three Wise Men's Report, a reference to its trio of authors Robin Alexander, Chris Woodhead and Jim Rose. The opening page of this report talks about 'highly questionable dogmas which have led to excessively complex classroom practices and devalued the place of subjects in the curriculum'. The Three Wise Men's Report led to considerable debate and probably had some influence on moves back towards recognisable subject teaching in primary schools.

Given the different views about how to organise a primary school day, a very reasonable question seems to be 'which system works best?' This question is harder to answer than it may seem, for several reasons, and research findings vary. There certainly have been studies which suggest that there are advantages in having more direct whole-class teaching, as opposed to group and individual work. Such studies tend to point out that this form of organisation gives the teacher more opportunities to interact directly with the children and ask challenging questions. Studies have also found that some teachers are able to do this using more complex systems. There has also been some research suggesting that style of organisation is not a major factor in determining pupil progress. In addition, studies of pupil progress (or lack thereof) in other countries has had an impact on the processes adopted or discarded in British schools.

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Because of the combination of factors described above, there was an increase in subject teaching in primary schools in the 1990s. This culminated in the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy and the National Numeracy Strategy with their associated English and Mathematics lessons. Despite this, there is still variation between the ways different primary schools work, though the variation is probably smaller than it was twenty or thirty years ago. There is much more standardisation as far as the curriculum is concerned now; in addition the inspection regime, national testing and league tables put considerable pressure on schools to follow recommendations. The increased direct teaching advocated by the strategies probably means that more children are being taught the next step in core subjects and children are increasingly likely to move on to new work, together, with others of the same age. This has a clear advantage in terms of entitlement, but raises questions about to what extent the system can meet the needs of those who have not understood work or who cope easily with the content laid down for their age-group.

Looking at the development of primary education, one is tempted to suspect that eventually there will be a change of heart and a return to systems favoured in the not-so-distant past. At the moment, however, the current system seems reasonably secure, though there is certainly some concern about the testing regime and the level of prescription. Recently, there have been concerted attempts to consider innovations and creativity within the primary curriculum and to see that subjects such as art and music do not disappear. The secretary of state for education has talked about 'excellence and enjoyment' in primary schools, claiming that children learn better when they are excited and engaged. It is not just the hours that are important, children need to be happy too.