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Music charity EMI Music Sound Foundation is running a Pounds Sterling 200,000 project throughout 2008 to train primary teachers in teaching music. EMI will also provide primary schools with funding to buy resources such as instruments, songbooks and composition software.

Several schools in the U.K. are implementing the Government's personalized learning approach to meet students' needs by making the curriculum more relevant. The success of the personalized learning program at Grange Primary School in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, is discussed.

A program launched by a grammar school to enable pupils of comprehensives gain knowledge of higher education and future career options is discussed.

Students at Treloar, a special school and college in Hampshire, suffer from a range of disabilities, some potentially fatal. However, the school's positive outlook and the support systems in place help staff and students cope with death as part of life.

The UK government has opted for a focus on performance-related pay in its Green Paper on the modernisation of the teaching profession. It feels that this will attract more recruits of a higher standard, and generally motivate the profession due to the focus on individual accountability. However, teachers are uneasy about the new concept of linking their pay to the performance of their pupils. Headteachers also feel that the annual administration of staff appraisals will be an unwieldy process requiring a great deal of trust between teacher and headteacher.

The article discusses the advantages and disadvantages offered by the teaching of the knowledge of neuroscience to students in schools. Some of the different aspects of the brain that are covered in a biology class for Year 11 students at the Boys Oratory School in England are highlighted.

Meteorology and forecasting hold considerable potential as subjects in the U.K. secondary school curriculum. The Meteorological Office and the Royal Meteorological Society offer several resources to develop students' knowledge while eliminating misconceptions and increasing pupils' appreciation of the subject.

Research demonstrates that parental involvement improves students' behavior and achievement levels. The issue is discussed with reference to parent support groups run by The Compton School in Finchley, north London, which tackle adolescent problems through a three-way interaction between staff, students and parents.

The useful and enjoyable revision courses organized by Oxford Science Studies during summer holidays are discussed. The classes enable students to catch up in subjects and teachers to earn extra money and hone their knowledge.

A special school opened in the same premises of a primary and a secondary school in the Darlington Education V illage offers an opportunity to the disabled and artist children to mingle with the mainstream students and the behavioral difficulties of mainstream students can be counseled by the special school teachers.

Music for Change, a Kent-based organization founded in 1997, promotes cultural awareness, understanding and respect using music as a vehicle for change, as well as a way of integrating subjects across the curriculum. The charity works closely with a team of artists and performers from India, Africa and the Caribbean to offer tailor-made workshops to schools in the UK.

The international interests and technological advances that are shaping education are highlighted along with the concerns regarding the importance of the process of teaching and learning gaining relevance rather than the content being taught. The need for a national debate against such a background, to determine the new curricula for the 21st century students who will be shaping England's economy in the future, is emphasized.

Guided reading is still the weakest part of the national literacy strategy, according to experts. The authors look at possible strategies and books to strenghten the area.

The author meets the teachers who have authored a series of reading books for children with learning difficulties. The aim of the series is to ensure that all children are included in reading.

The story of Noah's Ark is used to help children with communication difficulties master simple words by identifying animals in the story and blending sounds to tell their names. A multi-sensory approach to teaching and learning enables these children overcome language barriers.

Citizenship lessons are effectively imparted to school students in a Liverpool secondary to tackle racist attacks on some Asian and African American students of the school. A visit to local museums to learn about family histories and Liverpool's history in relation to slavery and history enabled the students to teach younger children about racism and stereotyping, which boosted their self-esteem and confidence enabling them to cope better with racist incidents.

The 'Spoon Race' project allows school children in Oxfordshire to transform1000 wooden spoons into a colorful collection of the county's past and present citizens to commemorate 1000 years of the county's history. The children enjoy this opportunity to work independently and creatively to produce a work of art, and variations of the project are being pursued by other schools as whole-school projects.

The dyslexia center at the Penweddig School in Aberystwyth, Wales, is probably the first that uses a bilingual approach, through English and Welsh, to help dyslexic pupils. Students work on their phonological skills by matching sounds to groups of letters or playing word games, and because Welsh is highly phonetic as compared with English, the children can progress more quickly to working on polysyllabic words.

Chesterton Community College in Cambridge will perform the Dance of Geometry, a work by Damien Harron, at the Cambridge Music Festival which this year has a theme of Mozart, Music and Maths. The Dance of Geometry includes music based on the Fibonacci number sequence and also incorporates polyrhythms and elongated sequences of notes.

Hilary Cook was never diagnosed as dyslexic and did not realise her problem until she was starting her career as a special needs teacher and her daughter was diagnosed as dyslexic. She became this year's national Teaching Awards' special needs teacher.

Albany High in London offers Catch Up sessions for struggling readers. The Catch Up secondary school programme was developed by Dee Reid and Diana Bentley in response to requests from secondary schools who had heard of the success of the scheme in primary schools.

Article outlines simple strategies to help integrate autistic children into the mainstream. Autistic children have a special set of needs which must be met.

Victoria Park Infants School, Bristol, has implemented a Reading Recovery programme. The programme is aimed at children who do not respond well to earkly phonics work.

A new exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford aims to help teachers bring the topic of pilgrimage to life. The 'Pilgrimage: the sacred journey' exhibition is the first to be organised by the Ashmolean Inter-Faith Exhibition Service which aims to draw together people from different backgrounds and religious beliefs.

Bartholomew School, Oxfordshire, is implementing the techniques of Philosophy for Children. The aim of the techniques is to open children's minds and stimulate debate.

The local education authorities of Southampton, Portsmouth, and Hampshire have finalised a new agreed syllabus in religious education. The outcome has been that the learning of RE has become more challenging and rewarding.

An overview of a music therapy programme operated in schools in Cambridgeshire through a scheme operated by the county council via the Cambridgeshire Instrumental Music Agency. The scheme allows schools to buy the services of music therapists for three hrs/week at a cost of about UKPd1,000/term.

Phillip Pullman, the award-winning author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, has opened the new library at Windale Community Primary School in Blackbird Leys, Oxford. The library has been welcomed by both parents and pupils at the school. Pullman thinks it is sad that not all primary schools have their own libraries.

International exchange for teachers can be beneficial in many ways as it can enhance a person's life as well as their work. Teachers' International Professional Development (TIPD) visits are funded by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and managed by different agents, including the British Council, the League for the Exchange of Commonwealth Teachers and the Specialist Schools Trust.

The primary strategy's Behaviour & Attendance Pilot is underway in 25 local authorities as part of efforts to establish a programme for encouraging positive behaviour among pupils. The pilot encourages a whole-school approach to developing the social, behavioural and emotional skills of children, but also advocates working in small groups with children who need special help.

Many children moving into Year 3 lose the confidence they have built up in reading, resulting in an eventual dip in their overall reading achievement. Such transitional problems can be overcome with the aid of the correct reading resources and a good banding system.

Children with special needs can obtain major benefits from learning to play a musical instrument, although strong teacher and parental support is vital. Melody, a charitable organisation set up by Rosie Cross, a music teacher, helps to promote the teaching of musical instruments to children with disabilities. The charity is set to make a series of notes and recordings available for teachers via its website.

'Can I Have A Word?' is the name of a series of poetry workshops which is being hosted at the Barbican in London, UK, as part of the centre's attempts to raise literacy standards in schools by helping inner-city schoolchildren to transform their imaginations into writing. As part of the workshops, poets helped the children to uses their senses to draw inspiration for their poetry.

An evaluation of War with Troy: the Story of Achilles, a new version of Homer's The Iliad, available as a three CD set plus teacher guide from the Cambridge School Classics Project.

Teachers at Willowbrook Primary School in Leicester, UK, are using Persona dolls to help their children to understand and respect religious and cultural diversity. The dolls, including Muslim, Hindu, black African and white dolls, enable the teachers to introduce issues which can then be discussed by the children. Tips for using the dolls in lessons are included in the article.

Videoconferencing technology has enabled schools in the UK to link up with specialists from around the world. The example of Lent Rise Combined School in Buckinghamshire, which now uses videoconferencing as an integral part of learning for pupils aged 4-11 years old, is given to illustrate the point.

Arbury primary school in Cambridge, UK, has been so successful in dealing with bad behaviour by pupils that it now shares its know-how and is visited by some 180 trainee teachers every year. Among the strategies pursued by the school is an emphasis on the positive by teachers, plus a system of rewards for good behaviour, balanced by sanctions for poor behaviour.

The Freshwater Theatre Company combines geography and drama in a way which is intended to make geography more appealing for children. The company was launched by Helen Wood and Carol Tagg, two former primary teachers, who realised that there was a lack of drama for geography. The Company has visited around 900 schools in London and the south east since its launch.

Mabel Pritchard school for children with severe learning difficulties in Oxford is using music to help both its teachers and its pupils to relax and enjoy themselves. The school is using Beat That, a music programme designed specifically for use in special schools and devised by Bobbie Stormont and Hilary Wainer. The main aim of the programme is to enable all special school staff to make music with their pupils, regardless of their musical background.

Elmtree infant school in Chesham has established its own language department to help pupils with speech impairment problems. Four children at the school have been identified as having language impairment, while a further two have been identified as being likely to benefit from being in a small group. The children spend half an hour in the language department, then rejoin their class where they spend the rest of the school day.

Simon Catling, primary geography specialist and assistant dean at the Institute of Education of Oxford Brookes University, argues that the government must remove much of the testing related to literacy and numeracy to give pupils a more exciting and broader education. Such a move would give a new lease of life to geography, a subject perceived by many primary school children as boring.

The Tithe Barn Primary School, Stockport, UK, is operating the Brainforest Project, offering new research on accelerated learning and higher-order thinking skills, starting up environmentally-friendly schemes for waste management and recycling, and promoting the idea of citizenship. The project shows that ideas expand and children can branch out in different directions when schools promote creative thinking.

The City of Portsmouth girls' school is a training school which assumes responsibility for running programmes for student teachers. At the school, teachers are learning that, if a pupil is challenging, they should challenge the act, rather than challenge the pupil back.

Keziah Featherstone, an English teacher at Woodrush High School in Birmingham, UK, has devised a fast-track English project which has enabled 60 pupils at the school to pass their GCSE English Literature exams one year early. The scheme was introduced as a means of improving motivation, boosting results and encouraging more pupils to stay on to the sixth-form at the school.

An interview with UK English teacher Sue Cowley is presented, focusing on her teaching experiences detailed in the the book 'Getting the Buggers to Write.' The book offers practical advice to teachers on how to get children interested in English and drama lessons.

A profile of children's non-fiction publishing company Franklin Watts is provided. Included is a discussion of how the publishing industry has changed since the company's inception.

Grahm Taylor of the Educational Publishers Council discusses the BBC's commitment to develop electronic publishing services for schools. Grahm Taylor expresses the view that electronic publishing poses no threat to the textbook publishing industry.