Official reports on primary education are a bit like London buses. You wait ages and then three come along at once. There has been no major report on primary education since the 1967 Plowden Report "Children and their Primary Schools". Now, final reports are awaited from the Cambridge Primary Review and the government-appointed Independent Review of the Primary Curriculum, and the Children Schools and Familes Select Committee has just published its report on the National Curriculum. This piece aims to place these reviews in their historical context.