ABSTRACT
This case study sets out to portray how students and teachers in one school are tackling the problems created by mismatches between themselves as persons and the demands of the environment in the transition from school to work. In time, the facilities, curriculum, and ethos of the school have changed as the school adapted to the increasing numbers of students with abilities, values, aspirations, and home backgrounds at variance with those of the staff establishment. Since its establishment Purdah has been subjected to three major external pressures: the pressures of a system which valued success in formal, academic disciplines. The pressures of social reformers seeking to humanize schools and to promote social equality through schooling. And the pressures created by youth unemployment and concern about the degree to which school leavers are adequately prepared for work. These three pressures reflect what could be described as strange bedfellows: liberal education, pastoralism, and vocationalism.
