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The Primary
Review home > Themes and questions
> The three Review Perspectives
Children and Childhood. What do we know about young children’s lives in and out of school, and about the nature of childhood, at the start of the 21st century? How do children of primary school age develop, think, feel, act and learn? To which of the myriad individual and collective differences between children should educators and related professionals particularly respond? What do children most fundamentally need from those charged with providing their primary education?
Culture, Society and the Global Context. In what kind of society and world are today’s children growing up and being educated? In what do England’s (and the UK's) cultural differences and commonalities reside? What is the country’s likely economic, social and political future? Is there a consensus about the ‘good society’ and education’s role in helping to shape and secure it? What can we predict about the future – social, economic, environmental, moral, political - of the wider world with which the UK is interdependent? What, too, does this imply for children and primary education? What must be done in order that today’s children, and their children, have a future worth looking forward to?
Education. Taking the system as a whole, from national policy and overall structure to the fine detail of school and classroom practice, what are the current characteristics, strengths and weaknesses of the English state system of primary education? To what needs and purposes should it be chiefly directed over the coming decades? What values should it espouse? What learning experiences should it provide? By what means can its quality be secured and sustained?
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