Mondays to Fridays until June 7, 5.25-5.35pm

The children’s news review has already started its election coverage, in an election where the parties are promising that education will be high on the agenda (again). The programme will be joining forces with the Hansard Society to carry out a parallel mock election in the week running up to the grown-up poll; participants can vote for the existing national parties, or start new ones to promote their own policies.

Presenters Matthew Price, Kate Sanderson and Lizo Mzimba will be be reporting from around the UK on the progress of the campaign, and party leaders will be interviewed on issues of concern to young people.

On the night, the Newsround website (www.bbc.co.uk newsround) will provide the first dedicated children’s election results service.

Best of the rest. The Fifties. The History Channel. From Sunday, May 27, 8pm (rpt May 28, 12 noon).

Sandwiched between the Second World War and the Swinging Sixties, the Fifties often seems a dull decade, a period of prosperity and consumerism, especially in the United States. This informative seven-part series looks at some of the interesting currents beneath the calm surface, stirred by anxieties about nuclear war, communism, sexuality, feminism and race. Among the history-makers of the time are Hugh Hefner, founder of Playby, musician BB King, and Dick McDonald (begetter of Ronald).

Arena: The Source. BBC2. Monday, May 28, 11.30pm-12.30am.

The fifth programme in The History Channel’s series on the Fifties deals with the Beat Generation, the subject of this engaging Arena documentary, made when Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and Gregory Corso were still alive to contribute to it. They tell their stories, beginning with the 1944 meeting between Burroughs, Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac which started it all. Extracts from their works are read by Dennis Hopper and Johnny Depp (as Burroughs and Kerouac respectively), and archive footage helps to shows that there were a lot of cool cats around in the Eisenhower Age.

Best on radio. Journey Into Language. Radio 4. Sunday, May 27, 5.40-5.55pm.

In the first of three programmes, Eric Hawkins, one of Britain’s leading modern language teachers and theorists of second-language learning, describes his own early experiences at a Liverpool primary school in the 1920s, where he recalls Miss Makins’s method of teaching French vowels with a mirror. He went on to the Liverpool Institute where he was given the chance to learn Spanish, a turning point in his career.

Full educational programme schedules can be found online at www.bbc.co.ukeducationlzonesched.shtmlwww.4learning.co.ukprogrammessumm er2001.cfmwww.historystudy.co.uk