A.C.E.

Founded in 1960, with Dr Michael Young as its chairman, and Tyrrell Burgess as director, ACE does more than answer questions from worried mums: it publishes books, runs residential courses, and conducts more than a few educational experiments. Perpetual stirrers, they have recently held a conference on discipline in schools, and no one will be in any doubt why they held it or what side they're on. Largely owing to their constant badgering for the rights of parents, those old signs in primary school corridors reading ‘Parents must not proceed beyond this point’ are disappearing. Streaming — a subject present director Brian Jackson has always felt strongly about — may also owe its abolition in many areas to the force of ACE's arguments — which favour strongly grouping in the primary school, as much individual attention as possible from teachers for slower‐learning children, discovery methods to replace rote learning, creative writing, a new approach to music — creative rather than passive, again — Nuffield Science for juniors and a new deal for nursery toddlers — all have come under ACE's hammer at some time or another. Not content merely to keep reiterating Lady Plowden's recommendations for the primary school, Where has often researched far beyond the immediately obvious educational priority areas and has outlined the needs for deprived groups like gypsy children. Pressurizing for comprehensives doesn't go off the boil when the idea takes root even in High Tory enclaves: with ACE it goes on simmering for more flexible methods of learning and grouping inside such schools.