Being there -- Community voices -- Teachers' voices -- Learners' voices -- Ideas for a improved educational future -- Dust and deprivation -- Poverty and unemployment in the community -- Sources of income -- Literacy within rural households -- The experience of rural poverty -- Histories of communities -- The history, purposes and significance of education -- The road to school -- Early childhood education -- In school -- Learner:teacher ratios -- Class size -- School fees and uniforms -- Hunger and school meals -- Ill-health and HIV/AIDS -- Disability -- Teenage pregnancy -- Humiliation, bullying, sexual abuse and violence -- Traditional ceremonies -- Consequences of disrupted schooling patterns -- School and community together -- Services -- School infrastructure -- Experience of the classroom -- Curriculum -- Resources -- Approaches to teaching and learning -- Corporal punishment -- Improving rural classrooms -- Making the curriculum 'relevant' -- Parents' perspectives: education for rural development -- Learners' perspectives: equal education, democracy and social justice -- Learners' educational and occupational aspirations -- Democracy in schools -- Relationships between home and school -- Teachers and communities -- Teachers and learners -- Parents and schools -- School governing bodies -- Community leaders and schools -- Education officials and rural schools -- Rural education and development -- Education and rural development in historical context -- The relationship between urban and rural development -- Democracy, development and rural education -- Why rural education? A case for an extended notion of the right to basic education.