The school is important here because, for most children, it represents the first concentrated evidence of this social deficiency. In addition, of course, there is the fact that schools have traditionally seen themselves as responsible for promoting "correctness" in linguistic matters (Trudgill, 1975). This implies that not only may linguistic discontinuity be noted at school, it may also provoke some action. Typically, as we shall see, this has been of a remedial nature, even though (from what we have already discussed) we can also see that in one sense there is nothing to be remedied. The general issue here, then, is what (if anything) has been done (or should be done) about disadvantaged speech at school. At a very general level, one might say that two broad possibilities exist: either the pupil must accommodate to the ideas and methods of the school, or the school must adapt to the ideas and methods of pupils. Historically, the first of these has prevailed, while latterly we see more evidence of schools changing to deal with different pupil backgrounds. For convenience, we propose to discuss these matters from the perspectives of the teachers, parents and children.