ABSTRACT
The success with which Child Migrant Education Program teachers were incorporated into the State education systems varied from State to State, but the common overriding factor was the low priority given to the appointment of special migrant teachers when teachers in general were in short supply. Teacher-education bodies have in general put up a strong resistance against changing their programmes in response to the ethnic diversity of schools or concepts of multicultural education, and their resistance has been the easier to sustain because they are to a considerable degree isolated from productive contact with schools, curriculum developers or community groups. Political events of the seventies have also entailed wide swings in the fortunes of migrant education. An array of teachers, educational administrators and experts, teacher educators, academics, parents and ethnic communities, separately and in various combinations, claims a share in this defining process, and most educational systems have avoided committing themselves formally to any particular position.
