The purpose of this study is to explore and describe the essence of pupils' experiences of motivation in school. The empirical material has been gathered in Sweden through self-reports and focus groups and analysed by means of an empirical phenomenological method. The research results show that two constituents--interest and progress--are necessary and sufficient for the experience of being motivated to learn in school. Interest and progress have been delineated as most invariant constituents of the investigated experience. Different factors are connected to these two essentials of experienced motivation. The most central of them is the teacher, whose approach has varied importance for the pupils' motivational experience in school.