The Arts in Schools - Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation

for candidates between the 100th and 80th percentile — the top20% of the whole ability range — and CSE examinations primarilyfor the 80th to the 40th percentile — the next 40% of the wholeability range . . . The percentile sets out to define, at any pointbetween O and 100 the level at which individuals perform inrelation to their group. Thus, someone at the 60th percentilehas performed better than 60% of his/her peers.' (Waddell, 1978,P2)The abiding problem here is that it is not, of course, the whole abilityrange which is tested but only those particular abilities — including shortterm memory — which are needed to pass examinations. Success orfailure in exercising these abilities is then taken as the indicator of allother abilities.2 Attempts are being made to devise graded tests in modern languagesthrough schemes in Oxfordshire, the South Western Counties, InnerLondon, Hertfordshire, Northumberland and at the Language TeachingCentre in York. The Schools Council has also undertaken a study ofgraded tests and will be reporting early in 1982. Information on thisand the study of profile reporting can be obtained from The InformationSection, The Schools Council, 160 Great Portland Street, LondonWl.Chapter 71 Mary Warnock, commenting on the Government's White Paper onSpecial Needs, Times Educational Supplement 19th September 19802 See, for example, Joan Freeman, Gifted Children, 19793 These figures were supplied by the Commission for Racial Equality.4 Among research published in the 1970s, for example, Gibson andChennell's Gifted Children, 1976, reporting the first world conferenceon gifted children; Hitchfield's In Search of Promise 1973, a long-termnational study of able children and their families in the NationalChildren's Bureau's Studies in Child Development; Hoyle and Wilks'Gifted Children and their Education, 1975, commissioned by theDepartment of Education and Science; Rowlands' Gifted Children andtheir Problems, 1964; Ogilvie's, Gifted Children in Primary Schools,1973; HM Inspectorate's Gifted Children in Middle and ComprehensiveSchools, DBS, 1977; and Joan Freeman's Gifted Children, 1979 basedon the Gulbenkian Research Project on gifted children.5 Shape, 9 Fitzroy Square, London W1P 6AE. Tel. 01 388 9622 or01 388 9744. Regional addresses available through Shape.6 Further information on this work is available from The British Associationof Art Therapists, 13c Northwood Road, London N6 STL7 Horace Lashley and Tania Rose Cultural Pluralism: Implications forTeaching Arts in Schools We are indebted for many facts and argumentsin this area of our study to this paper by Lashley and Roseprepared for the Commission for Racial Equality, December 1978166