ABSTRACT
Exclusion from school was a starting point here for considering the experiences of those who were excluded but the practice of exclusion itself raised issues about schooling in secondary schools. Many of the case study samples were already experiencing exclusionary processes, apart from their formal exclusion. Those processes were tied up with constructions of ‘ability’. Even where pupils had previously been noted as very bright, their perceived lack of motivation as they grew older caused them to be placed in lower-ability groups, compounding their oppositional attitudes and further alienating them from schooling.
