Primary–secondary transition: Differences between teachers’ and children’s perceptions

Abstract

Transition from primary to secondary school is an important but neglected topic. For this review, 88 studies were selected from 325 possible studies, as including substantive data related to transition. The teacher’s perspective and the child’s perspective were very different, the former principally concerned with attainment and the latter principally concerned with socio-emotional issues. Children were concerned with peer relations and bullying, self-esteem and external support networks. Teachers were concerned with the attainment dip on entry to secondary school, curriculum problems, school strategies to ameliorate these, special groups and children with disability. The secondary school was a problem for all children at first, but after a term many children adjusted, though 40 percent still struggled after a year. The difficulty was greater for children from homes in poverty or ethnic minorities, particularly where parental encouragement was lacking. The quality of the evidence was critiqued and evidence-based implications for practice and policy and future research were outlined.