Grade 7 children's attitudes to high school were assessed through their drawings of how they perceived high school prior to making the transition from primary school. Seven categories were used to analyse the drawings. The results revealed a preponderance of negative features in the drawings, especially amongst the boys. Anxieties such as vulnerability in the new school environment were suggested. A follow-up, once the adolescents had been in high school for six months, revealed more positive features in the drawings indicative of adjustment to the new school environment, and no sex difference in the ratio of positive to negative features was recorded.

Although consultation is increasingly becoming the preferred method of psychological service delivery in schools there appears to be many unresolved issues. As more empirical evidence is gathered about psychological interventions the issues raised have become specific. Initial questions of intervention effectiveness are replaced by questions about the problems and clients suitable for such interventions and the conditions under which they are most effective. Consultation research is in its infancy methodologically but already questions apart from those about effectiveness are being asked. The complexity of the process of consultation, even within one model (e.g. behavioural consultation), is such that the specification of suitable problems, clients and conditions is a difficult task. Examination of recent outcome and review literature suggests such questions are still a long way from being satisfactorily answered.

This paper seeks to contribute to the understanding of the conditions which underly the functioning of young Greek-Australians in their society, and the relationship between their ethnic background and identity. Questions relating to ethnic background and identity were administered to 1,029 Greek-Australian pupils from 25 secondary schools in the south-east, inner west and central areas of Sydney (439 males and 590 females). Principal components analysis of fifteen items from the survey was used to explore individual variations in responses. The largest correlation was 0.56 between the importance of Greek origin and feelings about being Greek. Six components with eigen values > 1.0 accounted for 59% of the total variance. The six patterns of response were characterised as : I. Cultural involvement-media contact, II. Ethnic Identity, III. Ethnic Background IV. Bipolar Greek cultural factor, V/VI Specific Factors. There was a general tendency for ethnic background and internalisation-of-identity responses to be separated as components.

The majority of psychological assessment measures used with children rely on the use of U.S. normative data in their interpretation. Recent studies have brought into question the validity of equating Australian children with their U.S. peers, with findings of different normative values across the two cultures for some behavioural measures. This study reports data from three commonly used child self-report questionnaires, namely the Children's Depression lnventory (CDI), the Fear Survey Schedule for Children—Revised (FSSC-R) and the Children's Action Tendency Scale (CATS). The Australian sample reported very similar results for the CDI and FSSC-R to those found with U.S. samples. Differences in scores across grades were found for the CATS which have not been reported in U.S. studies, suggesting that local norms should be used in its interpretation.

Portage is a home-based educational service for families with pre-school children with special educational needs. The services gained its name fortuitously as Portage just happened to be the small town in Wisconsin, U.S.A., where the project was first developed. The town is a crossover, or ‘portage’, between two rivers and as such symbolises the essence of the service: a ‘bridge’, transferring knowledge and expertise from professionals to parents; closing the gap between deficits exhibited by young children and skills needed for success in school and later life.

The Portage Scheme was developed in 1969 as one of hundreds of projects in the Head Start Programme in the U.S.A. aiming to provide early education for children with special needs. Children living in rural communities were the focus of this particular project. The originators David & Marsha Shearer (1972) felt it inappropriate for these children to travel long distances into a centre. Instead they broke with the traditions of their day and developed a service that was taken to the children in the familiar environment of their homes where their own parents were helped to become their teachers. The decision to do this was based on a conviction that parents are potentially the child's best teachers, particularly in the early years.