Publisher's Synopsis
As we begin the era of School Exam League Tables and student profiling we still know little about what actually drives and motivates pupils at school. We infrequently hear the voice of the pupil as a consumer of education whether this is the voice of the non-achiever or achiever. Moreover, we know little about how gender, class and ethnic origins affect pupil attitudes towards (a) their teachers and subjects; (b) their future aspirations and (c) their actual destinations upon leaving compulsory education behind them. - - This volume seeks to explore these areas using an ethnographic and interactionist approach. It explores pupils? own perspectives by focussing intensively on the school lives experienced by twenty white and black, male and female pupils in a city comprehensive, during their final fifth form year, in the 1980s. Pupils are then shadowed in their later studies or search for work. Detailed accounts from these pupils are set against a backdrop of questionnaire data collected from the entire fifth form year group of some 250 pupils.
