We are sure that we shall receive submissions from individual teachers and parents/carers. Indeed, the first submissions reached us within a few hours of the Primary Review’s launch on 13 October.

But some teachers may need encouragement, while others, and many parents/carers, won’t yet have heard about the Review. As for children, it’s their future which is at stake, yet all too often adults presume to speak for them. Fortunately, the current interest in pupil/student voice is helping people to realise that children are better learners when they understand what their education is about.

There are several ways that teachers can contribute to the Primary Review, and can help parents/carers and children to do so as well. Here are some possibilities:

• Submit evidence individually.
• Discuss the issues with colleagues and put together a collective submission, whether from a group of like-minded teachers, a school staff or even a cluster of schools.
• Bring parents/carers into the discussion and either send in a combined parent-teacher submission or encourage them to submit their own.
• Involve children in the process as part of their education and ensure that we hear from them too.

Although the deadline for submissions has passed, please get in touch if you have further ideas or evidence you believe we should know about: contact details are here.

What's the Primary Review about, and why is it needed?

For more information on the Review and why it is needed go to:

About us > Why do we need the Review?
About us > What does the Review hope to achieve?
About us > Who will undertake it?

What are the big issues covered by the Primary Review?

To understand the thinking behind the Review’s very comprehensive focus, go to:

Themes and questions > Themes and questions home.

Then look in more detail at the 3 Review perspectives, the 10 Review themes and the detailed lists of questions attached to each of them:

Themes and questions > The 3 Review Perspectives
Themes and questions > The 10 Review Themes.

The perspectives, themes and questions will help shape your discussion and frame your submission.

How can I and/or my school get involved?

As we’ve said, we need to hear from teachers. We also hope that teachers will help us to ensure that we hear from the two groups to which they are closest – parents and children.

If you want to submit evidence yourself, individually or collectively, go to:
Evidence > How you can submit evidence.

If you want to find ways of involving parents/carers and/or children in the process of discussing the issues, go to:
Evidence > Involving parents and children
Evidence > Setting up your own Primary Review Forum.

Note particularly the suggestions about setting up a Primary Review Forum. This guides you through a sequence from deciding a focus to making the submission.

Let’s hear from you, and from the parents/carers of the children you teach, and from the children themselves. You don’t need to cover all ten themes – that would be a mammoth task. Select just the themes and questions that particularly interest or concern you.

If you have any queries, email us at
enquiries@primaryreview.org.uk
or phone us on 01223 767523.

To submit evidence email it as an attachment to
evidence@primaryreview.org.uk or post it to
The Administrator, Primary Review
University of Cambridge Faculty of Education
184 Hills Road
Cambridge, CB2 8PQ.

Although the deadline for submissions has passed, please get in touch if you have further ideas or evidence you believe we should know about .

Children's voices: suggestions please

If you go to the Children's homepage, you will see that we are appealing to them directly as well as via teachers and parents. To begin with, we have put very little on the Children’s pages. This is because we need your help in identifying the best ways to involve children.

For example, you might consider adapting some of the Review’s themes and questions in the context of the teaching of PSHCE, for it could be argued that few things give better proof of a school’s commitment to citizenship than its willingness to involve children in discussion about their own education.

So let’s hear your ideas and suggestions about the children’s page, please. In particular, send us concrete suggestions for classroom or school-level activities through which discussion of educational and related issues can be explored with children, and ways that these discussions might be turned into submissions to the Review.

Email: enquiries@primaryreview.org.uk or telephone the Primary Review Administrator on 01223 767523.