* January 26, 1929

The new panacea for all our social evils seems to be the cry of “Raise the school age.” The optimists seem satisfied with the cry without asking what the school is to do with the vast mass of pupils who make little or no progress with the subjects about which the school is traditionally concerned. Are the unselective central schools to continue a curriculum which has failed to awaken much response? Are these children of 11 plus to be started again from a new mark on the same hard road? Are we to find a cure by giving them an extra year or two staring at print, or are we to seek a new kind of education for minds that can deal with things but not symbols? Raise the school age, by all means, but let us first decide how we are to handle a problem which has been too much shirked.

50 years ago

* January 29, 1954

The opening on Monday of Bramley Hill, Croydon, drew attention to the predicament of spastics (cerebral palsy sufferers). Their number in England and Wales is commonly put at 20,000 or more, about half of them children.

Of these fewer than 2,000 are at present receiving any form of education.

The task ahead is urgent. Many spastics are of high intelligence: a recent Ministry of Health report has emphasised the danger of certifying as mentally defective an intelligent spastic unable to express himself.

25 years ago

An industrial dispute kept the TES out of production from November 30, 1978 to November 16, 1979.