ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the foundations for intervening—that is, for making educational provision over and above or complementary to existing curriculum. Children from allegedly 'depriving' backgrounds have been the recipients of 'compensatory' intervention approaches. A number of studies have chronicled the 1970s trend towards increased parental representation and presence in schools, covering aspects such as parental assistance to teachers in hearing children read, helping in other activities, participating in outings and membership of parent–teacher associations. Parental involvement in children's reading can be regarded as a vehicle for the realisation of a number of aims to do with children's learning in particular, and with home–school relations in general. People working in compensatory milieux have transmitted such knowledge and experience about effective ways of matching teaching methods, task analyses and learning sequences with short- and longer-term objectives. Pedagogic principles of optimising human potential become applicable then to all children.
