It’s a saddening comment on our methods of financing research that a very important book about education should be essentially an after-thought to a public health survey. In his introduction to Dr J. W. B. Douglas’s book, The Home and the School,footnote1 Professor Glass says, ‘The investigation . . . was originally undertaken to examine the availability and effectiveness of the ante-natal and maternity services in Britain’. For this purpose over 5,000 families were selected, in fact every family which had a child born in one week in 1946. ‘It had not originally been intended to continue the research beyond the 1946 study,’ but as Professor Glass rightly observes, ‘a superb opportunity would have been missed’.

Such are our preoccupations now that the third book about these children deals not with their respiratory tracts but rather with their ‘abilities’ and ‘achievements’ at school and their selection for secondary education. The book is as Professor Glass states, frankly ‘obsessed with the underprivileged’, i.e. that majority of children whom ‘selection’ selects out. Alongside this obsession runs the simple equation that not only do able children need education but the country needs them. Unfortunately the equation doesn’t necessarily balance—the education children need isn’t in a superficial analysis the same as the country’s ‘scientific manpower reiquirements’ on which the provision of higher education is based. Still as Dr Douglas states, it is very important to understand what is happening when we talk of the ‘pool of ability’ at 18, and ‘to know how large the pool would be if there were no leakage of talent’ earlier.

To find this out ‘the teachers assessed the level of interest the parents showed in their children’s school progress’. ‘The headmasters described the location and amenities of the schools and the type of children who came as pupils. . .’ ‘Health visitors and school nurses . . . were the chief sources of information about the children’s families and home circumstances.’ While at school the children were assessed by tests of ability and achievement administered at 8 years 3 months and again just before the 11th birthday. This is the first thing to note about this book: it is a very thorough study of a limited area of the education system, primary schooling, but in that system’s own value terms and measurements. Such an attack is both a strength and a weakness. The results are a revelation of what can be achieved by persevering, inspired sorting of punched cards and the delicate weighing of statistical evidence. Anyone who doesn’t ‘believe in’ statistics must surely be convinced by those deployed here—though it’s significant that to get figures which really tell him something, a opposed to merely supporting hunches, Dr Douglas had to abandon x² and go on to ‘relatively sophisticated statistical techniques’ which require specialist analysis and a computer.