About the Book

• How do children live, think and learn during their early and primary years?
• How well are our primary schools doing?
• What has been the impact of government efforts to raise standards?
• By what values should schools be guided and what curriculum and learning environments should they provide?
• How can primary education best meet the needs of today’s children and tomorrow’s world?

These were among the many questions that the Cambridge Primary Review set out to answer when it was launched in 2006. Politically independent and grounded in an exhaustive array of national and international evidence, it was the most comprehensive enquiry into English primary education for 40 years. Its 31 interim reports provoked lively headlines and debate.

In this book, the Review presents its findings and recommendations. Compellingly and accessibly written, the book is divided into five parts:

• Part 1 sets the scene and tracks primary education policy since the 1960s
• Part 2 examines children’s development and learning; their upbringing and lives in an increasingly diverse society; their needs and aspirations
• Part 3 explores what goes on in schools, from the vital early years to aims, curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, standards and school organisation
• Part 4 deals with the system: ages and stages; teachers, training, leadership and workforce reform; funding, governance and policy
• Part 5 pulls everything together with 78 formal conclusions and 75 recommendations for policy and practice.

Children, their World, their Education is more than a ground-breaking report. It is an unrivalled educational compendium. It assesses two decades of government-led reform. It offers a vision for the future. It goes to the heart of what education in a democracy is about. It deserves to be read by all who care about children, their primary education and the world that they will inherit.

Editor: Robin Alexander, Director of the Cambridge Primary Review.

Authors: Robin Alexander, Michael Armstrong, Julia Flutter, Linda Hargreaves, David Harrison, Wynne Harlen, Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer, Ruth Kershner, John MacBeath, Berry Mayall, Stephanie Northen, Gillian Pugh, Colin Richards, David Utting.

The Cambridge Primary Review is supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation: www.primaryreview.org.uk

Children, their World, their Education has a companion volume: The Cambridge Primary Review Research Surveys, edited by Robin Alexander with Christine Doddington, John Gray, Linda Hargreaves and Ruth Kershner.