Ideas of linear progress and predictability are essential to globally circulated ideas of educational planning, but do not necessarily correspond with the realities and priorities of ordinary people whose life trajectories often shape very differently. Thus, shedding light on the contradictory ideas about education and divergent expectations as to the meaning and "outcome" of schooling held by different social actors, the aim of this article is to explore why young people do not necessarily follow educational programmes along a linear track as often envisioned by planners. Based on ethnographic material collected in a squatter settlement in Kathmandu since the mid-1990s, the article focuses on the discrepancies between the ideals of progress and social change characterising educational planning, continued practices of social exclusion and culturally produced meanings ascribed to education, as it is played out in the context of the "urban poor" in Nepal. (Contains 6 notes.)