ABSTRACT
Mapledene Lane was a Junior Mixed and Infants' school completed in the late 1960s on a large new local authority housing estate. The estate was considered large by local standards. The physical position of the estate accentuated a feeling of cultural and social separation from its surrounding area. This sense of isolation is partially explicable by the fact that the type of housing which bordered the estate could be considered a typical suburban development of the late 1920s and 1930s and was different in terms of its social class composition from that of the estate. The school itself had been built some time after the first housing units had been completed and some of its first pupils had been reallocated from other schools. The school was well equipped with the materials and audio-visual equipment one might expect in a modern primary school. The headmaster had been teaching since the end of the last war and held a previous headship elsewhere.
