Plowden, Bridget Hortia (1910–2000)

English educationist. The first woman chair of the Central Advisory Council for Education 1963–66, her report, Children and their Primary Schools (1967), marked a watershed in the development of English primary education. Known as the Plowden Report, it favoured child-centred learning in the classroom, and backed the establishment of ‘Educational Priority Areas’ to combat inequality.

Plowden subsequently became chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority 1975–80. She was appointed DBE in 1972.

The Plowden Report concentrated public attention on the relationship between primary schools and the home and social background of children, arguing that education must be concerned with the whole family, and that increased resources were needed for nursery education and for areas starved of new investment – ‘Educational Priority Areas’. It took child-centred approaches to their logical limits, insisting on the principle of complete individualization of the teaching/learning process.