For most of these school leavers or 'pushouts', school has been an experience of progressive alienation from their traditional way of life. We prefer the term 'pushout' to 'dropout' because the former term appropriately allocates the agency for the phenomenon.

To this portal ascent is made by a mystic, indisputably prologetic, flight of steps.

To prove who gave the fairer butt, / John shows the chalk on Robert's coat.

Dagon his name, sea monster, upward man, / And downward fish.