Rural Church of England Primary Schools: Listening to Denominational Inspectors

Abstract

This article examines the roots of today's Church of England primary schools and some of the major legislation that continues to shape the state-funded dual system of church and county schools in England and Wales. Pressures on church schools and the long-standing controversy surrounding the dual system are discussed, as is the Church of England's response through its current plan of action. Key research into changes in teacher attitudes to the distinctiveness of church schools arrived at the striking and unpredicted conclusion that teachers working in church schools in 1996 were more positive in their attitude to the distinctiveness of church schools than teachers working in such schools in 1982. This is convincingly explained by linking the changes in attitude to the launch of the denominational inspection system, and its associated training, brought about by the introduction of the Education (Schools) Act 1992. The article draws on evidence from the denominational inspection system on the distinctiveness and effectiveness of church schools. Recent denominational inspectors' reports are analysed to discover the quality of education provided by 58 small rural church primary schools in England. Conclusions about the education provided in these schools and ways forward for small rural primary church schools are offered. Possibilities for future research are given.

Small in Size, High in Quality

“…Clearly these small rural church schools are providing high quality education. These findings are consistent with Rolph and Rolph's (2010) previous study that showed over 4 out of 5 of the schools provided their pupils with a good or better than good educational experience.…”

“…In their previous study, Rolph and Rolph (2010) analysed recent SIAS reports to discover the quality of education provided by 58 small rural Church of England primary schools. The evidence from these reports showed that, in terms of the key elements inspected, over 4 out of 5 of these schools gave their pupils a worthwhile educational experience.…”

“…However, the sample of schools studied was too small to come to firm conclusions and hence further research with a larger sample was required. Against this background, the aim of the present study is to build on the work initiated by Rolph and Rolph (2010) and to survey a larger sample of schools.…”

Assessing the innovative skills and competencies required of construction management graduates

“…Table 3 sets out the minimum criteria guide used in this study for the conduction of PCA. These have also been adopted in multiple studies in the literature (Joseph et al 2010;Nilashi et al 2015;Kapsoulis et al 2018;Isa et al 2020). Typically, when an opinion is required to be sought from a larger number of respondents, employing a webbased snowballing data generation approach would be a better option.…”