ORACLE to MAST: 40 years of observation studies in UK junior school classrooms

The ORACLE study, first published in 1980, provided much needed systematic descriptive information on the interactions and behaviour of pupils in the upper primary school in the UK, to set against the political rhetoric of the day. Since this pioneering study, there have been several other systematic observation studies of pupils at the same stage, but to date, these results have not been collated in order to provide an historical account of trends over time. This chapter uses data from six large-scale studies (ORACLEs 1 and 2, One in Five, PACE, DISS and MAST) to assess change over time in amounts of interactions with teachers, interactions with peers and independent activities. In addition it addresses two features of mainstream primary schools that have arisen since the ORACLE study: the increase in pupils with special educational needs (SEN) and the huge rise on the numbers of teaching assistants (TAs) working in classrooms. A main result was the doubling of interactions with teachers over the last 35 years, especially interactions as part of the whole class. As a result pupils had a more pronounced passive role. In contrast to pupils without SEN, we found that pupils with SEN had high levels of separation from their peers, either through adult support or because of time spent out of the class. But the main trend over time for pupils with SEN was for them to have far more interactions with TAs, often one-to-one. This has had profound consequences for such pupils’ educational experience and progress.