Journal article

In June 1974, Mrs Mary Tagg, then of Auckland Secondary Teachers College and now a Guidance Counsellor at Onehunga High School, Auckland, conducted a survey of slow learner education in state secondary schools in Auckland and North Auckland. The results of this survey will be of interest to all concerned with the education of slow learners in New Zealand secondary schools.

In one sentence the National Children's Bureau is an interdisciplinary organization concerned with all aspects of children's needs- health, education, development- in the family, school and society.  But that one sentence leaves very many questions unanswered. Is it necessary? What does it actually do? How is it funded? How long has it existed? How big is it?

Benjamin Bloom claims that, regardless of the differences among students that may be suggested by intelligence tests or assessments of achievement, about 95 percent of all students can master the school curriculum at practically the same level of mastery. Slower learners, he says, can learn as much as fast learners. His Book, Human Characteristics and School Learning, is reviewed in this set item by well-known educational psychologist Robert J. Havighurst

While the role of mothers is often emphasised in discussions of child development, fathers are usually considered only in the context of the role of parents. Recent research suggests, however, that more recognition could be given to fathers' share in parental responsibility and to its significance to school attainment and social adjustment.

In recent years it has become a matter of orthodoxy that language programmes are necessary for children from poor homes and children from minority groups. One of the most influential of all programmes for pre-school children has been the one devised by Carl  Bereiter and Siegfriend Engelmann (Bereiter and Engelmann, 1966; Bereiter, Engelmann, Osborn and Reidford, 1966). It was put into effect in what was called an "academic pre-school".