Yet Another 'Crisis' in Primary Education? Anatomy of an Aborted Unpublished Enquiry 1948–1951

In the period since 1944 English primary education has been subject to recurring criticism. Official enquiries, surveys of attainment, individual causes-célèbres and the pronouncements of pundits have drawn attention to purported 'rises' The paper discusses the background, procedures and findings of the earliest of the post-war official enquiries – an unpublished and previously uncited investigation by the Central Advisory Council for Education (England).