ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the daily transition between home and school that is made by children of primary school age (5-11 years). This transition is so commonplace that it might seem unremarkable, and indeed, it has received little explicit attention from educational policy makers in the UK and elsewhere. Yet, as we shall see in this chapter, it is a transition that raises questions of fundamental importance concerning the educational attainment of different groups of children. Moreover, as we shall also see, attempts to manage this transition by exchanging information between home and school raise major ethical and political questions about the appropriate boundaries between the two contexts, and about the underlying relationship between public and private lives.
