Focusing on pupils moving from primary to middle or secondary school, it describes and evaluates the schools' programmes to ease transfer, and includes material provided by the pupils themselves. The main body of the book is a rich and detailed account of the first months of life in new secondary schools, where the pleasures and perils of new friends, new teachers and new subjects, and a new approach to teaching are encountered. The book conveys vividly how pupils experience a new environment, and meet its dangers, rules and regulations, timetable, complex groupings and ideology.

Inside the Secondary Classroom was the first comparative ethnography of school life in Britain, carried out in six schools. It reveals surprising similarities and differences between them.The cases studied range from highly successful pupils with nine 'O' levels to others with severe social and personal problems.

Sara Delamont, Maurice Galton

Acknowledgments 1. Introduction: the ORACLE project 2. Ready, steady, panic? Preparation for transfer in the ORACLE schools 3. First days in the new school 4. Danger! schooling in progress: Physical and social dangers in the new schools 5. The Luton Airport Syndrome: Movement and immobility in the new schools. 6. Speed merchants and slow coaches: Time in the new schools 7. What group are you in? Formal grouping arrangements in the new schools 8. One big family? The home and the school. 9. Help from my friends? The staffroom and the peer groups 10. Conclusions . Appendix 1. List of participants. Appendix 2. Follow-up data Bibliography of publications from the ORACLE project. Bibliography of works cited in the text. Index of authors. Index of participants. Index of subjects.