From Abacus to Circle Time: A Short History of the Primary School - Episode 1

Education journalist Mike Baker traces the controversial changes to the ways we have educated our youngest children over the past 150 years, from the rigidity of the Victorian age to the occasionally anarchic, experiential learning of the progressive 1970s. Mike explores the strict, no-nonsense Victorian schoolroom and hears from former pupils about their experience of primary schools from the 1930s to the 1960s, including Baroness Shirley Williams, who recalls the poverty of her fellow pupils in her London elementary shool in the 1930s.