ABSTRACT
The research report by the Department for Education and Employment1 shows that to some degree, however small, all schools have some level of pupils moving in or out. For the purpose of this study I chose the concept of school migration to refer to these movements. School migration is assumed to mean the movement by black learners away from the historically disadvantaged schools in search for better quality education elsewhere.2 This movement appears to be influenced by the desegregation of schools that, for the first time in the history of South African education, has made possible the shift of learners across schools. School migration is contrasted with labor migration-the concept that dominates the literature. Labor migration is about adults while the former is about learners. However, a common terminology related to school migration that has been used by other researchers, for example, in England and Wales, is that of “pupil mobility.”3 Pupil mobility is defined by OFSTED as the total movement in and out of schools by pupils other than at the usual times of joining and leaving, (Mennell, 2005 and Pupil Mobility Guidance).
