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g of language should seek to eliminate the conflation of language with class and further standardise the use of the English language in both speech and writing. This process of standardisation extended to the teaching of handwriting, ‘correct’ pronunciation, and the attainment of certain levels in all of the literacy skills.
Over the next few decades, the practice of English language teaching in British primary schools remained focussed on the teaching of basic literacy skills, while the child and his/her individuality and personal development became increasingly important. At a higher level, the study of English literature was gaining considerable prestige at universities as critics such as F. R. Leavis set about establishing a canon of English literary texts to rival the Latin and Greek classics that had long occupied a prestigious place in British education. It was not until the century’s second most influential government report on education, the Bullock Report, was published in 1975 under the control of Margaret Thatcher that the practice of English teaching underwent another stage of evolution. While the Report’s main purpose was to reverse what was considered to be a decline in literacy standards and to impose new or modified regulations on the teaching of English, according to Mercer and Swann it “found no evidence for falling standards in literacy” (Mercer & Swann 1996:181). Its recommendations, therefore, highlight the socio-political climate of the late 1970s and early 1980s in that it places a great emphasis on individual progress and success and the significance of English for children’s continuation into employment or university. Its two main recommendations were the development of a “language programme from preschool to school leaving age” and the establishment of reading “as an integral part of the language curriculum” (Mercer & Swann 1996:181). While the Bullock Report concerned itself with the maintenance of standards, the influence of the Dartmouth Conference a few years prior to the Report’s publication was still highly influential as it combined language practice with literary creativity by encouraging creative writing in primary school. In contrast to the confused state of British primary-school teaching of English a century before, the establishment of a National Curriculum based on the four fundamental aspects of literacy: reading, writing, listening and speaking in the 1980s brought the standardisation process to full maturity. In the same way as Celtic languages suffered at the end of the nineteenth century, the concentration on Standard English as the norm in the classroom in the 1980s and early 1990s gave rise to the fear that children who spoke non-standard varieties of English in the home were losing a part of their cultural identity. As Mercer and Swann report, however, many teachers “have tried to educate children about their own language use”, thereby widening the child’s linguistic and cultural sensibility and education.
It is evident that the changes that have taken place in the teaching of English in British primary schools between the end of the nineteenth century and the end of the twentieth century reflect the changes that have taken place in the social, political and cultural fabric of British society. As the boundaries between classes became less of a