The name is absent

PART B: Thematic analysis
4. School and initial education

It is a commonplace that people who do not succeed at school leave with little
motivation to return. We had many accounts of people who had been badly treated at
school, who left with little to show for it and who had had to overcome great hurdles
to re-enter education. However the picture is naturally more complex. Many
respondents also spoke of having enjoyed school in spite of having achieved no
qualifications; conversely some - far fewer, admittedly - told how they had done
relatively well in their initial education, in school and beyond, but had nevertheless
left with no desire to resume formal learning.

Since both achievement and enjoyment affect subsequent participation, and therefore
further benefits, another simple matrix is called for.

Figure 3: Matrix classifying individual learners

The swans are those who have sailed through their initial education, maybe not
without effort but both enjoying their time and leaving with skills and qualifications to
show for it. Trudgers have managed the latter, but at a cost. Survivors have gone
along for the ride and had a pleasant time without getting much in the way of
qualifications out of their time at school. The losers have lost out both ways.

Since we found individuals present in all four categories (or, more accurately, along
both dimensions), this means that simplistic assumptions about the role of initial
education in subsequent educational experience should be discarded. For example,
some of the losers had been left with wholly negative feelings, and it had been
enormously difficult for them to bring themselves to resume acquaintance with the
education system. But in other cases failure at school had left them with a desire to do
better for themselves and a determination, often forcefully expressed, that their

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