Best movies like Song for a Raggy Boy

An inner-city high school teacher discovers she is pregnant at the same time as one of her most promising students and the two develop an unlikely friendship while struggling to navigate their unexpected pregnancies.

War between two Irish youth gangs consists of removing and retrieving buttons from each other's clothing.

In the '80s, priests and especially the Father Geoghan arrested for sexual abuse of minors. Cardinal Law, also indicted, and the diocese was aware of the actions of these men of the church and was kept secret for years, until the victims decide to seek redress.

A young, English working-class boy finds a kestrel and decides to train it.

A poor, struggling South Carolinian mother and daughter face painful choices with their resolve and pride. Bone, the eldest daughter, and Anney her tired mother, grow both closer and farther apart: Anney sees Glen as her last chance.

When troubled 12-year-old Jacob Felsen is sent away to boarding school, he enters every kid’s worst nightmare: a creepy old mansion, deserted except for six other teenage misfits and two menacing and mysterious teachers. As events become increasingly horrific, Jacob must conquer his fears to find the strength to survive.

Dr. Matthew Clark is the head of a state institution for intellectually disabled children. Jean Hansen, a former music teacher anxious to give her life some meaning, joins the staff of the hospital. Jean, who tries to shelter the children with her love, suspiciously regards Dr. Clark's stern training methods. She becomes emotionally involved with 12-year-old Reuben Widdicombe, who has been abandoned by his divorced parents.

At an exclusive boys' school, a new gym teacher is drawn into a feud between two older instructors, and he discovers that everything at the school is not quite as staid, tranquil and harmless as it seems.

The two brothers Aske and Bastian live with their father, Lasse, in a world of fear, violence and alcohol but the brothers' strong and close relationship means everything. Aske must serve his father's sexual needs, as well as paying customers and his father's friend, Hans. Aske tries everything to keep his little brother out of it all so that he won't experience the same as himself. But one day Bastian is abused by their father. The brothers choose to move to Norway, far away in the beautiful mountains. Their friendship outshines everything! They are together and far away from their evil father...

Spain, 1939. In the last days of the Spanish Civil War, the young Carlos arrives at the Santa Lucía orphanage, where he will make friends and enemies as he follows the quiet footsteps of a mysterious presence eager for revenge.

After being abducted as children, and suffering years of abuse, a teenage boy and girl find themselves living on the street.

Stockholm, the fifties. Though academically bright, violent pupil Erik Ponti is expelled from his state school with the headmaster’s words “there’s only one word for people like you – evil… what you need is a good thrashing, and more”. In fact already Erik frequently receives a ‘good’ thrashing at the hands of his sadistic stepfather – so he is packed off by his mother to boardingschool

Jealousy flares after the headmistress of an elite boarding school for girls becomes obsessed with a new student.

The story of an unruly class of bright, funny history students at a Yorkshire grammar school in pursuit of an undergraduate place at Oxford or Cambridge. Bounced between their maverick English master, a young and shrewd teacher hired to up their test scores, a grossly out-numbered history teacher, and a headmaster obsessed with results, the boys attempt to pass.

Freshman high-school student Melinda has refused to speak ever since she called the cops on a popular summer party. With her old friends snubbing her for being a rat, and her parents too busy to notice her troubles, she folds into herself, trying to hide her secret: that star senior Andy raped her at the party. But Melinda does manage to find solace in her art class headed by Mr. Freeman.

William Hundert is a passionate and principled Classics professor who finds his tightly-controlled world shaken and inexorably altered when a new student, Sedgewick Bell, walks into his classroom. What begins as a fierce battle of wills gives way to a close student-teacher relationship, but results in a life lesson for Hundert that will still haunt him a quarter of a century later.

Santiago, capital of Chile during the Marxist government of elected, highly controversial president Salvador Allende. Father McEnroe supports his leftist views by introducing a program at the prestigious "collegio" (Catholic prep school) St. Patrick to allow free admission of some proletarian kids. One of them is Pedro Machuca, slum-raised son of the cleaning lady in Gonzalo Infante's liberal-bourgeois home. Yet the new classmates become buddies, paradoxically protesting together as Gonzalo gets adopted by Pedro's slum family and gang. But the adults spoil that too, not in the least when general Pinochet's coup ousts Allende, and supporters such as McEnroe.

A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.

Three juvenile delinquents arrive at a correctional center and are put under the care of an experienced guard.

A group of young girls are brought up in a college within dark forests and gloomy lakes. Young Hidalla and her friends Irene, Vera, Blanka, Melusine and Rain are brought up in an isolated world: the girls don't know anything about live outside the college's high walls. At the age of 16, some of them start asking questions about their origins, their parents and the true purposes of the Headmistresses strict rules. When two of them disappear mysteriously, the initial fairytale atmosphere grows more and more eerie...

When David Greene receives a football scholarship to a prestigious prep school in the 1950s, he feels pressure to hide the fact that he is Jewish from his classmates and teachers, fearing that they may be anti-Semitic. He quickly becomes the big man on campus thanks to his football skills, but when his Jewish background is discovered, his worst fears are realized and his friends turn on him with violent threats and public ridicule.

In the space of a week, Howie loses nearly everything and everyone he knows and is left to navigate his adolescence virtually unsupervised.

Elle Marja, 14, is a reindeer-breeding Sami girl. Exposed to the racism of the 1930s and phrenological examinations at her boarding school, she starts dreaming of another life. To achieve this other life she has to become someone else and break all ties with her family and culture.

A troubled and angry 11-year-old orphan from a small Texas town, ends up at a Boy Choir school after the death of his single mother. Completely out of his element, he finds himself in a battle of wills with a demanding Choir Master who recognises a unique talent in this young boy as he pushes him to discover his creative heart and soul in music.

After the unexpected death of his survivalist father, an eleven year old boy raised in the Alabama wilderness must learn how to make a home in the modern world.

Stockholm in the 1920s. Young Roland lives with his socialist father, Jewish mother and a boxing brother. His mother sells condoms illegally, and from them, Roland makes slingshots which he sells. His rebellious ways has gotten him the special attention of his school teacher, who always makes sure that Roland is punished. Roland also tries to make extra money by repairing bicycles, a successful business that in the end lands him in hot water.

Musical film about the trials and tribulations of an idealistic drama teacher as she tries to put on the end of year show.

Four women are given into the custody of the Magdalene sisterhood asylum to correct their sinful behavior: Crispina and Rose have given birth to a premarital child, Margaret got raped by her cousin and the orphan Bernadette had been repeatedly caught flirting with the boys. All have to work in a laundry under the strict supervision of the nuns, who break their wills through sadistic punishment.

Young Jeremiah lives in a stable environment with loving foster parents until the day his troubled mother, Sarah, returns to claim him. Jeremiah becomes swept up in his mother's dangerous world of drugs, seedy hotels, strip joints and revolving lovers. Salvation comes in the form of the boy's ultrareligious grandparents, but soon Jeremiah's mother returns. Maternal love binds the pair together on the road until Sarah's desperate and depraved lifestyle finally consumes her.

A former nazi child-killer is confined in an iron lung inside an old mansion after a suicide attempt. His wife hires him a full-time carer, a mysterious young man who is driven slowly mad by the old man's disturbing past.

In the 1940s South, an African-American man is wrongly accused of the killing a a white store owner. In his defense, his white attorney equates him with a lowly hog, to indicate that he didn't have the sense to know what he was doing. Nevertheless convicted, he is sentenced to die, but his godmother and the aunt of the local schoolteacher convince school teacher go to the convicted man's cell each day to try to reaffirm to him that he is not an animal but a man with dignity.

When six-year-old Ruby Bridges is chosen to be the first African-American to integrate her local elementary school, she is subjected to the true ugliness of racism for the first time.

The determined new headmaster of an English prep school attempts to reform the frequently unruly students, who are tormented by a ruthless bully.

Sixteen-year-old Michael Dunn arrives at St. Basil's Catholic Boys School in Brooklyn circa 1965. There, he befriends all of the misfits in his class as they collide with the repressive faculty and discover the opposite sex as they come of age.

A constant runaway is given over to the care of the state and finds herself in a remand centre for girls. She is soon caught between the uncaring bureaucracy, the sometimes brutal treatment from her peers and her own abusive family, and only one care worker sees her potential to rise above her tragic circumstances.

Barry Goldwater Elementary is on the brink of collapse: the lowest test scores in the state, teachers who are either drunk or having sex on school grounds, and a principal who extorts money from parents. It's up to Tom, the down-on-his-luck vice-principal, to rally the lazy teachers, expose the principal's corruption, and turn the school around before an end of the day board decision.

Starring Jurgen Prochnow ('The Replacement Killers' 'Air Force One' and Patrick Muldoon 'Stigmata' 'Starship Troopers'), 'Heart of America' is a powerhouse of a contemporary drama and essential viewing for anyone who was captivated by Michael Moore's 'Bowling For Columbine'. It is the last day of high school and the unthinkable is about to happen. Distraught at the constant abuse and bullying they have been subjected to, two students have made a suicide pact. But before they take their own lives, they are determined to cause chaos and murder amongst their fellow students.

A teenage boy is sent to a juvenile reform facility in the wilderness. As we learn about the tragic events that sent him there, his struggle becomes one for survival with the inmates, counselors, and the retired war colonel in charge.

Obsessed with fantasies of sex, Father Miguel seeks professional help through his church but they are not listening; thus leaving the Father in a dilemma; leaving the church or should he try, on his own, to surrender to these temptations?

The true story of boys being sexually abused at their orphanage, run by a religious community in Newfoundland.

An all-black inner city school has to become an integrated school. Few dozen white kids are transfered there, but the black students are aggressively opposed to this. The school then approaches a tough black teacher for help.

Two psychologists try to demonstrate that a man is a pedophile and has abused many children.

Set in London’s East End, The 14 (aka The Wild Little Bunch aka Existence) is based on the true story of fourteen children who struggle against overwhelming pressures to stay together after the death of their single mother.

When Jamie's maternal grandmother dies, he and his brother Tommy are separated - Tommy is taken off to a welfare home and Jamie goes to live with his other grandmother and uncle. His life is far from happy, filled with silence, rejection and bouts of violence.

Thirteen-year-old Ramon is on the verge of many adolescent discoveries -- and the confusion that goes along with them. Shy and awkward, he's moved from town to town throughout his childhood and believes that life is about winning and losing. But he soon learns it's all about survival. Like Ramon, Spain is in transition (President Francisco Franco is about to die); it's a time of social upheaval marked by change, illusion and struggle.

A group of troubled teens are sent to a rehabilitation program housed in a remote camp on the island of Fiji. What their parents believe is a state-of-the-art deluxe institution in a beautiful natural environment turns out to be a prison-like boot camp where they are abused and brainwashed.

Set in the blooming 1960s, the film centres on two young brothers who are instantly robbed of their lives when they are placed in a boy's home forgotten by time. Armed only with a vivid imagination and a fickle hope, the boys engage in the frightening battle against Headmaster Heck and his lethal tyranny. The film is based on actual events.

1959, support from US troops based in Asia and later from the Sates enables two actresses to start a charity for mixed-race 'orphans' who are locally neglected as outcasts. Thus originates Childhelp, which later runs multi-disciplinary centers for abused and/or neglected children in the States. Among them is bright Jacob Fletcher, whose stepfather, a lawyer, terrorized him into utter trauma and reclaims him shortly after 10 months in jail. Jacob's peers have distressing stories of their own, but competent, devoted staff helps most of them decisively on the former farm, using animal therapy.

When new teacher Steve Drake joins the faculty at a school for special-needs students, his unorthodox instruction methods raise eyebrows. But attitudes begin to change when he makes a connection with a particularly unruly student.

The Élan School was a for-profit, residential behavior modification program and therapeutic boarding school located deep within the woods of Maine. Delinquent teenagers who failed to comply with other treatment programs were referred to the school as a last resort. Treatment entailed harsh discipline, surveillance, degradation, and downright abuse. Years later, the patients who were institutionalized in this facility still carry the trauma they endured, with mixed opinions on the impact of their experience.