This is a case study focussing on a group of Year 12 students, October 2002 — June 2003, in a sixth-form college in a predominantly working-class area of Essex. The dynamic context is the sampled students' sense of their own progress, cross referenced with that of their teachers and parents. The issues under examination are the links between initial transition and the achievement of a sense of security and focus as the students embark on their AS studies. As part of the guinea-pig generation for SATS and Curriculum 2000, their educational journey has taken place within a time of flux and the study makes space to hear from them, as well as to counterpoint their 'narratives' within a wider setting of policy change. While the main reason that there has been so much more research on the transition from primary to secondary school is clearly that the size of the problem is far greater, another reason may be because the older student is considered less vulnerable to the effects of change. My research indicates that this may not be so. I maintain that the two stages are comparable in so far as wasted opportunities in transition can have detrimental effects on academic and personal fulfilment. I suggest three contexts that can be seen to impact on transition: the institution, the curriculum and government policy. In looking beyond the study, I argue that it is important to consider how far changes to these contexts which may arise out of reforms in education for fourteen to nineteen year olds, currently under discussion, are likely to affect transition for students in the future. I take an interpretevist, ethnographic approach, and reflect throughout on my position as a practitioner researcher, the implications of whose studies are lived out in front of her each teaching day.