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Spens (1938)

(page numbers in brackets)

Notes on the text

Preliminary pages (i-xxxviii)
Membership, Analysis, Preface, Introduction

Chapter I (1-86)
Development of the secondary curriculum
Chapter II (87-106)
The present position
Chapter III (107-139)
Physical and mental development of 11-16 year olds
Chapter IV (140-205)
The curriculum of the grammar school
Chapter V (206-217)
Scripture
Chapter VI (218-253)
English, classics, mathematics, general science
Chapter VII (254-267)
The School Certificate Examination
Chapter VIII (268-290)
Technical schools
Chapter IX (291-341)
Administrative problems
Chapter X (342-348)
Welsh problems
Chapter XI (349-385)
Conclusions and recommendations

Appendix I (386-402)
List of witnesses
Appendix II (403-414)
Liberal education (Young)
Appendix III (415-428)
Secondary curriculum (Kandel)
Appendix IV (429-438)
Faculty psychology (Burt)
Appendix V (439-452)
Transfer of training (Hamley)
Appendix VI (453-464)
Curricula in the Dominions (Clarke)

Index (465-477)

The Spens Report (1938)
Secondary Education
with Special Reference to Grammar Schools and Technical High Schools

London: HM Stationery Office

Notes on the text

The full text of the Report (including the Appendices) is online.

I've modernised some of the punctuation so that, for example, " secondary " is shown here as 'secondary', I've updated a handful of spellings (today instead of to-day etc) and corrected a few misprints. Paragraphing is as printed in the original. I've added explanations to a few archaic words which are no longer in common use. Anything added by way of explanation is shown [in square brackets].

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.

In this web version of the report the larger tables in Chapter II are shown in the text as links: clicking on one opens a new window displaying the relevant table.

Preliminary pages