Summary.A particular pattern of goal‐setting behaviour in a level of aspiration test was found to occur more frequently in technical schools and in the “A” streams of modern schools than in the lower modern school streams and in grammar schools. In previous research, this pattern, of setting high goals and adhering to them rigidly, whatever the fluctuations in performance, has been associated with anxiety and similar personality traits. Matched pairs of these children and controls were compared for other possible indices of anxiety in the material of an investigation of which this is a part. The findings are discussed in relation to the possible effects of success and failure involved in secondary school sele