Families and communities

Adolescents delight in 'Low Culture' Films such as Police Academy. They may be the sort of films adults carefully avoid but they are full of lessons and are ideal teaching material.

Californian experience and research bears on the problems of teaching children with diverse languages and diverse cultural attitudes to education. Solutions appear, and are relevant to us.

A primary school invited parents to be more than just teachers' aides; parents with particular skills came and taught. Some were more successful than others, but teachers' fears of losing control and of poor teaching were unfounded.

Should my child repeat the year? Many an anxious parent asks the teacher this question. This Australian study looks at the effects of repeating. Against popular opinion, the long term effects are nil, and the child is a year behind his or her peers.

Children from homes with little money do not always fail, but it is usual! This careful study of three groups of high school pupils and their families compares and contrasts incomes, circumstances, lives, aspirations, and successes; and the ways poverty and performance are linked become much clearer.

Quite small children recognise the problem some schools have in keeping staff. What makes for a satisfied, stable, teaching force? What can principals and administrators do?

Published 101 years ago by an anonymous author, a small pamphlet extolled the virtues of votes for women. Here is the original re-written as a play for schools and any other group.