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Catholic) schools replied to the questionnaires. Clearly it was necessary to see if there were
problems with the questionnaire. A straw poll telephone contact was made with the first five
History Co-ordinators in the list of contacts compiled for the questionnaire. They were
assured that the researcher was not contacting them to fill in the survey but to ask for their
help in trying to find out why very few people had responded to it. They were then asked the
following questions: Did you get the questionnaire? Were there any problems with it? For
example, was it too long? Were there any issues with the questions? Two teachers said that
they had been ill or had just returned from maternity leave. Three teachers said that due to
limited time they had not got round to answering it. In all cases they said that there was not an
issue with the form or the questions and two people offered to complete it. Clearly, it is
possible that a mixture of pride and politeness may have affected these answers. Indeed, if
they had not had time to answer the questionnaire it is possible that they had not looked at it.
Given that the pre-pilot survey did not suggest that there were problems with the survey it was
decided to keep the questions. However, the presentation of the questionnaire was streamlined
with the intention of making it possible to complete it more easily. The straw poll suggested
that the questionnaire reached its intended audience. Direct conversations with subject coordinators
suggested that they would be prepared to do what was required. Consequently, it
was decided to directly contact History Subject Co-ordinators before sending out the
questionnaires. This proved incredibly time-consuming in practice, often requiring several
telephone calls. The nature of this case study was clearly distinctive in that people were
responding to direct requests for help. A second written reminder was sent out but it was felt
that since this followed a telephone request, it would be inappropriate to send a third request.
The results were quite encouraging since replies increased to 46 out of the 75 schools (61%).
26 out of the 40 LEA history co-ordinators (65%) and 22 out of 35 (63%) Roman Catholic