[1][2] It argued that the future of the country depended on better education for "pupils of average and less-than-average ability".
The report was produced by the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) and takes its name from the council's chairman John Newsom, Joint Managing Director of Longmans Green and Co Ltd., and formerly the County Education Officer of Hertfordshire.
For the first time, free secondary education became a universally provided right.
This was a part of the major shake-up of government welfare in the wake of the 1942 Beveridge report.
For example it found that some secondary moderns in slum areas of London had primary school furniture for fifteen-year-olds, and teachers changing as often as once a term.