This issue of the journal brings together six educationalists with distinctive concerns about the range and quality of support needed and given to children and young people who experience difficulties in managing school or college. Their foci are very different: the "impact of fathers" (present or absent) on the young person's attitude and adjustment to schooling (Geddes); "sexual orientation" and the role which teachers and counsellors can play in the quest for a personal and public identity (Cooper); schools' support for children coping with "death and loss" (Holland); the concept of "emotional well-being" and how it may be promoted in schools (McLaughlin); the task of the school in developing "resilience" in young people (Johnson); and the supreme importance of "relationship" in everything that a school does to promote personal, social and emotional development (Harris). This collection does not, of course, claim to cover all the challenges facing education, but it does typify the kinds of issues which teachers, counsellors and others in support roles in education find themselves dealing with, and they do remind everyone of the British tradition of schools (and their staff) being in "loco parentis", and therefore concerned with the all-round well-being of their students. But as Harris points out, such a concept of education is one head of a monster which, at the other end, pressures schools to produce outcomes which have little to do with what it is to be a person. In this article, the author says something about this "monster" and identifies some current trends and challenges.