IT-INSET (Initial Training-In-Service Education of Teachers), is sponsored by the Department of Education and Science. It supports curriculum development by local teachers, providing them with initial-year education students as aides. The operation of the project at one junior school and the science curriculum developed are outlined. (SJL)

ICT has the capability to transform the way pupils understand and learn mathematics. When used with sensitivity and careful planning, it can act as a catalyst, contributing to a stimulating classroom climate which can bring mathematics alive. This paper takes a fresh and critical look at the use of ICT in mathematics teaching in Primary schools,…

This paper draws upon data gathered from a research project entitled "Children's Relationship Cultures in Years 5 and 6". The project aimed to explore the ways in which primary school age children understand emotional, caring and family relationships. This paper will focus upon the ways in which gender and sexuality is performed by boys…

The aim of this paper is to offer a view of the primary school as an institution with structural properties comparable to institutions in general. Five studies will provide the basis from which such a view is developed, those by Sorokin, (1938), Perrow, (1965), Schon (1970), Taylor, "et al" (1974) and Collins and Porras, (1998). The…

As part of citizenship education, school councils have been set up in primary schools based on adult models of democratic committees. This article looks at children's and teachers' perspectives on their school councils and goes on to analyse the ways in which alternative strategies for addressing the constraints identified were developed in three…

A study reports that, while elementary students dislike bare classroom walls, they have little interest in other children's work, but like and remember having their own work displayed. Children do not absorb the content of wall displays, but they have strong emotional reactions to decorations. (Author/SJL)

There may be forces at work that recently have created barriers and restrictions within primary education. Indeed it could be argued that those forces have reduced the children's education to a more rigid and limiting primary schooling. This article explores the influence of target setting and testing, literacy and numeracy hours, American and…

There has been a growing resurgence of interest in creativity in primary schools which has acted as a counterpoint to some of the more reductivist elements of the introduction of the National Curriculum and associated methods of testing. This article reports on a study of one primary school that has had some significant success in enhancing the…

This paper is intended to describe the roles and responsibilities of the small school head and is based on the personal experiences of a serving headteacher. It seems an accepted element of academic discourse that recent governmental initiatives have impacted on the leadership and management of educational institutions in such a way that they have…