ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the reasons prompting students from comprehensive schools to seek a university education, and explores which factors influenced their adjustment to the first year at university. An examination of the three aspects of the links between secondary and higher education revealed very little difference that could be attributed to the three groups—that is students who came from schools that had long been established as comprehensive, transitional or crypto grammar schools. The chapter looks at the effect of the combined influence of school and parents upon a student's adjustment to the freshman year. The question of home-centred as opposed to school-centred students is not merely related to either social class or parental education level. It is just as possible to have a school-centred student from a middle-class home as it is to have a home-centred student from a working-class background. The question of 'school-centredness' poses particular problems in the context of the comprehensive school.
