ABSTRACT
This chapter sets the context of the survival school by drawing on institutional textual data before discussing the main aspects of the study. In order to capture the tensions experienced by educators, and how it informed their work, we first describe the school's history. Then, in the subsequent sections, we focus on current enrolments and fees, the cultural and class diversity of the intake, facilities and staffing. In keeping with the central tenets of institutional ethnography (IE), the aim here is to draw on institutional texts to define for the reader how the school is negotiating pressures at a critical moment in time. The chapter concludes with an overview of the study itself.
