Research identifies that a percentage of students are less successful than others in transitioning from Year 8 to Year 9. A positive support programme was developed to target some of these students and help them ease from the nurturing climate within the primary system into the multi-faceted secondary environment. (Contains 1 table.)

This report summarizes activities in the AISD state-funded Optional Extended Year program for the 2003-2004 school year.

All superintendents of schools in cities of 5,000 population and over were recently invited by the United States Commissioner of Education to describe plans or methods they had worked out in their respective schools during the past few years. In response to this invitation, several hundred letters were received. Some gave complete accounts of one…