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CHILDREN & SOCIETY VOLUME 19 (2005) pp. 16–26 Published online 5 May 2004 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/CHI.830 Transferring Friendship: Girls’ and Boys’ Friendships in the Transition from Primary to Secondary School This paper seeks to explore the issues and concerns that impact upon girls’ and boys’ friendship groups as they transfer from primary to secondary school. Using the girls’ and boys’ own voices, we document the extent to which their existing social relationships are disrupted as they adapt to and engage with a new school setting. Through semi-structured interviews and questionnaires conducted in the final year of primary school and the first year of secondary school, we identify students’ concerns regarding their attitudes to friendship. We consider the extent to which account is taken of this aspect of children’s friendships and explore and analyse commonalities and differences in their responses. We argue that the priorities of our student groups are different to those advocated by the school. We further attempt to examine how the girls and boys in our sample negotiate their new environment. Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Introduction The transition from primary to secondary school was loaded with added significance as my struggle to mask terror coincided with recognition of deeper existential fears. Sitting in my bed at night and literally shaking with fear. The first time I realised my own mortality is a resonant memory of my childhood, waking up when everyone else is asleep and feeling my stomach churn ... the loss of the social milieu of the primary school, the demands of integration into a potentially hostile peer group in itself provoked deeply held fears of annihilation (Tuddenham, 1997: 2). Transferring from primary to secondary school is a key rite of passage for boys and girls, as they move from the seemingly familiar and safe environment of the primary school, to the unfamiliar and strange surroundings of the secondary school. During this transitional phase of schooling, children have to learn to read, negotiate and adapt to a very different school culture. Such a cultural shift includes meeting different teachers, adapting to a variety of teaching styles, a broader range of curricula, bigger and unfamiliar buildings and a far greater emphasis on regulatory measures. In addition, children find themselves repositioned as the youngest in the school, and Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Simon Pratt* London Metropolitan University Rosalyn George Goldsmiths College *Correspondence to: Simon Pratt, Department of Education, London Metropolitan University, 166-220 Holloway Road, London N7 8DB, UK. E-mail: [email protected]

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CHILDREN & SOCIETY VOLUME 19 (2005) pp. 16–26Published online 5 May 2004 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/CHI.830

Transferring Friendship: Girls’ andBoys’ Friendships in the Transitionfrom Primary to Secondary School

This paper seeks to explore the issues and concerns that impact upon

girls’ and boys’ friendship groups as they transfer from primary to

secondary school. Using the girls’ and boys’ own voices, we

document the extent to which their existing social relationships are

disrupted as they adapt to and engage with a new school setting.

Through semi-structured interviews and questionnaires conducted in

the final year of primary school and the first year of secondary school,

we identify students’ concerns regarding their attitudes to friendship.

We consider the extent to which account is taken of this aspect of

children’s friendships and explore and analyse commonalities and

differences in their responses. We argue that the priorities of our

student groups are different to those advocated by the school. We

further attempt to examine how the girls and boys in our sample

negotiate their new environment. Copyright # 2004 John Wiley &

Sons, Ltd.

Introduction

The transition from primary to secondary school was loaded withadded significance as my struggle to mask terror coincided withrecognition of deeper existential fears. Sitting in my bed at night andliterally shaking with fear. The first time I realised my own mortalityis a resonant memory of my childhood, waking up when everyone elseis asleep and feeling my stomach churn . . . the loss of the social milieuof the primary school, the demands of integration into a potentiallyhostile peer group in itself provoked deeply held fears of annihilation(Tuddenham, 1997: 2).

Transferring from primary to secondary school is a key rite ofpassage for boys and girls, as they move from the seeminglyfamiliar and safe environment of the primary school, to theunfamiliar and strange surroundings of the secondary school.During this transitional phase of schooling, children have tolearn to read, negotiate and adapt to a very different schoolculture. Such a cultural shift includes meeting differentteachers, adapting to a variety of teaching styles, a broaderrange of curricula, bigger and unfamiliar buildings and a fargreater emphasis on regulatory measures. In addition, childrenfind themselves repositioned as the youngest in the school, and

Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Simon Pratt*London MetropolitanUniversityRosalyn GeorgeGoldsmiths College

*Correspondence to: Simon Pratt,

Department of Education,

London Metropolitan University,

166-220 Holloway Road,

London N7 8DB, UK.

E-mail: [email protected]

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meet with new peers from different social, economic and cultural backgrounds who maybecome their future friends. As Hargreaves and others (1996: 1) emphasise: ‘Theexhilaration and pain of growing up for many early adolescents resides in their having muchless confidence in what they are moving towards than in what they have left behind.’

This paper considers students’ gendered attitudes to friendship, in terms of commonalitiesand differences at the point of transition from primary to secondary school. It has onlybeen in relatively recent times that the perspective of boys’ and girls’ experience of transferfrom one phase of schooling to the next has begun to be explored (Galton and Willcocks,1983; School Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA), 1996). Until this timeresearch into primary school transfer tended to concern itself with the organisationalarrangements, for example assessment procedures and selection, with the importance offriendship within this process of transfer being marginal to concerns of academicattainment and curricula demands. We would argue however, that the perspectivebrought by both girls and boys lays far greater emphasis on the importance of having abest friend and the significance of peer group membership. Measor and Woods (1984)highlight in their study of primary/secondary school transfer that friendship plays acritical role in providing support, reassurance and security for boys and girls at this stagein their schooling. Furthermore research by Orosan and others (1993: 400) into genderdifferences in academic and social behaviour of elementary transfer students, proposedthat ‘Higher anxiety levels in boys may suggest that boys have greater difficulty than girls inhandling the stress associated with school transfer, peer acceptance and teacher expectations’.

This study seeks to explore the impact that the process of transfer has upon thesignificance of friendship for boys and girls. It examines the priorities of students andsuggests that schools do not take sufficient account of them and instead privilegeorganisational structures and a prescribed curriculum against a background of schoolimprovement.

The research context

The focus for this qualitative, small-scale exploratory research was a study of a mixedgroup of 30 male and female students who had attended two primary schools and hadtransferred to local secondary schools. All the schools with the exception of one werelocated in the inner city, they were state funded and had socially and culturally diverseschool populations.

The data for the study were drawn from a combination of semi-structured interviews andquestionnaires conducted in the school settings. We recognise as researchers that the datacollected can only represent a partial view. Our intention however was to raise andhighlight significant issues that were important to our sample by selecting key extractsfrom the respondents. We hoped that the different realities expressed by the respondentswould provide some insight into the role that friendships play in supporting pre-adolescents in the process of transfer.

The data were collected as the cohort was completing the final year in the primary schools,and then again at the end of their first term in their chosen secondary schools. Semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were focused around discourses of ‘friendship’.

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In the primary phase we explored this theme within the context of girls’ and boys’ feelingsaround school transfer, whilst at the secondary level, the group’s adaptation to their newschool setting was emphasised. We anticipated that our interviews and questionnaireswould enable us to discover and analyse the real and lived experiences of thistransitionary process of schooling from the point of view of pre-adolescents and toidentify, in particular, what the dominant and significant discourses in their changingschool experiences were. Furthermore, we were keen to explore the extent to which boththe primary and secondary schools acknowledged the significant impact of peerrelationships on the transfer process, by exploring how far issues of ‘friendship’ wereforegrounded in any of the induction programmes into the new school regimes.

From the transcriptions of interviews and coded responses from the questionnairesemerging themes and patterns were identified. The intention of this research was not tomake generalisations but to highlight and explore the emerging issues. Furthermore weacknowledge that boys’ and girls’ identities are not fixed and that identity construction is acomplex and fluid process. The aim of the paper was to problematise the issue of peerrelations at this critical moment within the schooling process, whilst avoidingessentialised notions of what it means to be a boy or girl.

We acknowledge that the classroom and school exist as historical institutions and wewould argue that what occurs in these classrooms is in a constant state of change. Thus, theway boys and girls make meaning of their experience of transfer from one school site toanother will reflect the dynamic inter-relationship between their gendered identities andthe social conditions in which they are located.

Transferring schools—transferring friends

Through a detailed analysis of the girls’ and boys’ talking and writing about theirperceptions and feelings of transferring to secondary school, it became clear that for bothsexes the anticipated experience was painful, stressful and created feelings of anxiety. Incontrast to Orosan and others (1993), our study found that the anxiety and stress reportedby the girls in their interviews was as intense as that reported by the boys. For all of oursubjects the major differences they predicted as they moved from primary to secondaryschool were based on structural changes, for example the size and layout of the buildings,the greater number of teachers and students and curriculum diversity.

It won’t be the same as it is in Primary school. It will be much bigger. And there will be a lot more thingsto do and it will be kind of scary—loads of people and different classes to go to. Yvette

Bigger school, all together with children of all ages, stricter rules. Loads more homework . . . part of mewants to go but another part doesn’t. Nikki

And it will be like moving around a lot like because we go to different teachers instead of sticking withone. Bernice

If I fall on the ground nobody might help me because my old friends are in another class. Alum

However important these arrangements were to our group, by far the greatest issue forboth the boys and girls focused around friendship. We recognise that the concept of

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friendship has different meanings for different people and how one behaves with friendswill differ from one individual to the next and from one group of friends to the next.Nevertheless in this study, transferring with existing friends had far greater significancethan any concerns relating to the structural arrangements of the school.

Within the primary school the intensity of the peer relationship is constructed around therestrictive and contained setting of the classroom base (Adler and Adler, 1998). Whilst onthe one hand this social system may allow little opportunity for mobility and escape fromunwanted clique attention, it does, on the other hand, provide a great deal of security forits’ members and both boys and girls acknowledged the security that this setting broughtthem. Without exception all the boys and girls shared the same concerns regarding themove from what they saw as a safe and familiar environment, as Aj and Cassie state,

I feel happy because I was going to a new school but I also felt sad because I was leaving my primaryschool Aj

. . . here, in Primary school, you can stay in the same class and all of your friends are in the same class asyou. [Yeah] So basically you are always with them unless they are away. Cassie

However their responses to other aspects of transfer, as discussed in what follows,suggests a lack of unanimity in the perspectives brought by both boys and girls.

Interestingly, the majority of the responses from the boys illustrated that as the end ofprimary school approached, closer and more supportive friendships evolved, contra-dicting much of the literature on boys’ social relations which argues that boys’ friendshipgroups tend to be characterised by hierarchical structures and a competitive ethos. Thisbonding by the boys in our study could suggest a shared realisation of entering theunknown and the need for peer support. As Kelvin exclaimed, ‘I am nervous about going tosecondary school because I really won’t know anybody and I might not be in the same class as Farid,Iktar and Masum.’

While Khalid demonstrated a clear combination of excitement and anticipation coupledwith uncertainty: ‘I am very much looking forward to secondary school because I could go with myfriends and talk with them there. I am also looking forward to working with them and making newfriends.’

For many of the girls the latter part of the final year in primary school provided them withthe opportunity to secure closer friendships with girls who had previously been part ofanother group within their class, but who were now going to go to the same secondaryschool. However, in contrast with the boys, those girls who had been tolerated as part ofthe existing social network, but had been on the periphery of the group, could nowlegitimately be eased out. The culture of the girls’ world, where pairs group up with otherpairs, results in complex social relations. This complexity enables girls to construct newnetworks of potential friends, whilst breaking off with others.

Int: Do you think you will stay in touch with all your group of friends from primary school?

Emily: I don’t know, I think I will stay in touch with Cassie. Not so much Bernice because we’re reallyclose friends, but were not like oh phone each up and give each other telephone numbers.

Int: what about Juliet

Emily: Juliet, um well I’m not sure.

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The boys in our study all valued the importance of maintaining their current primaryschool friendships, although few of them had given much thought to how they would doso. An exception to this was Farid who maintained that he would, ‘See Kelvin at breaktime atManorside, if we aren’t in the same class. I will see Ewan if he comes to his Aunt’s house, which is inmy block, Aj will go to boarding school so I won’t be able to see him.’

Whilst the boys expressed enthusiasm at the prospect of the construction of newfriendships, they felt apprehensive and uncertain at possibilities of isolation in the newsetting but were already thinking of strategies to deal with this as demonstrated by Aj, ‘Itwill be a new experience. I have already got friends who are new to the school so we can talk aboutour problems’. Aj

The maintenance of existing friendship groups and the construction of new ones were alsohigh on the girls’ personal agendas. However the girls expressed differing levels ofconfidence in their ability to manage either. These differing levels of confidence reflectedthe girls’ positioning within the hierarchical construction of their existing friendshipgroup. Emily, who was positioned as the group leader ‘doesn’t have to worry [she] getsfriends easily’. Whereas Yvette, a member of the inner circle of the group, (see George andBrowne, 2000) who was to attend the same secondary school, expressed her anxiety thatEmily may leave her for new friends:

Yvette: I don’t know. I think she will make other friends but I don’t think anymore that she’ll leave mewhen we go to Parkside because she has been my best friend, one of my best friends since I was little. So Idon’t think she would do that.

Int: So you think she will stay loyal. Do you anticipate being her friend all the way through school?

Yvette: Yeah . . . I don’t know. I think I will be her friend all the way through school but I’ll have otherfriends of mine. I don’t know. Because we might get other best friends, but if we like, have been to thesame school all our lives then she is still going be my best friend.

Such doubt and uncertainty suggests that beneath the seemingly harmonious exterior ofgirls’ friendships, there lies tension and conflict.

Bernice’s construction of a protective shell highlighted her fear of moving into anenvironment, which she perceived as threatening and potentially competitive:

Bernice: I think it is hard for people to try and get to know me really because I kind of like, I make it hardfor other people to . . . I don’t know. It’s just a natural thing like being aware that you have to get toknow me before I actually go ‘yeah, I’ll be your friend’.

Bernice also drew upon ‘contingency friendship’ which, according to Davies (1984), is afriendship that is called upon when it becomes necessary to leave an existing friendbecause of inappropriate behaviour, or in circumstances such as these, where childrentransfer schools:

Bernice: I will make friends anyway for sure but like starting a new school is something big and with afriend there it makes it easier. Like, in the way that it’s going to be easier to . . . I’m gonna feel less scaredaround teachers and everything or doing stuff because my friend will be there. And like if I have anyproblems and I don’t make friends then I can always stick to her and tell her about different stuff.

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The importance of friendships in providing support to adjust to school is becomingincreasingly documented (Ladd and others, 1999; Savin-Williams and Berndt, 1990).Berndt and Hawkins (T. Berndt and J. Hawkins, unpublished manuscript) found that thestability of childrens’ friendships across school transitions was related to schooladjustment and that the children who had more stable relationships were more popularand more sociable. Berndt’s research further suggested that children who have closefriendships on entry to school will often get to know friends of friends and so develop apositive set of relationships.

Looking ahead

All the pre-adolescents in our study had constructed an institutionally defined image ofwhat secondary school would be like, this construction was based on handed-downstories and popular myths from peers, such as terrifying teachers, huge dauntingbuildings and being bullied by older students.

. . . she said the children were really naughty. [laugh] And she said that, she said the food was nice. [Thefood was nice?] Yeah. And she said that the homework wasn’t too hard. She said that it’s hard to get upin the morning because you have to get there at 8.30 for registration. And that was it really. Cassie

I heard that boys put your head in the toilet and flush it. Iraj

I heard that the boys’ toilets are disgusting and the boys were smoking in there. Motahir

They said if someone tells you that they are going to bully you or kill you then you must go and tell theteacher. Masum

A concern with image and status among peers appeared to be heightened at thistransitional phase, for the moving from the top of one hierarchy to the bottom of anotherwhen transferring schools seemed to cause confusion for both the boys and girls about lowand high status.

For the boys, seeing themselves as the youngest or smallest was expressed in terms of‘physicality’. Thorne’s study of playground behaviour (1986) resonates strongly with suchexpression. She describes how boys spent most of their free time carving out spaces andfilling them up with their play and their games and spoiling the play of girls and youngerboys. For some of the boys in our study their continued preoccupation with physicaldominance, coupled with their fear of violence and aggression, as they transferred tosecondary school appeared to represent an extension of and a new testing ground forasserting their masculinity,

I would not like to get into a fight and I would not like to get the ‘mick’ taken out of me. Ewan

I am not looking forward to getting told off and get detention after school, and meeting the big boys thatwill cuss me or even beat me up or taking my things and throwing them somewhere or hiding themsomewhere. Jamil

I am not looking forward to go to a bad secondary school and getting told off and get detention from theteachers, staying with bad boys that smoke and to go with them somewhere else bad. Aman

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Jackson and Warin (2000) suggest that boys, rather than being victims within this process,respond to their own sense of vulnerability and threat of this new environment andbecome more competitive and challenging, status seeking and assertive, as illustrated byIktar’s comment: ‘I am looking forward to going to a nice school and having a good time and towork harder and play better perhaps at football and be in the football team and being thecaptain’. . . . . Iktar

For the girls however, their repositioning as the smallest, rather than a challenge to theirphysical limits, was experienced far more in terms of emotional maturity and status as thenewest and youngest members of the school community. Karen anticipated the potentialembarrassment of being patronised by older and bigger students, ‘I won’t be the biggest anymore. I’ll be like the smallest. And they probably will be like ‘Oh, look at the new people, look at thenew people’. Karen

Whilst for Emily it was more of an irritant to be tolerated once again, ‘When I go to secondaryschool I will be the smallest again. I used to be the smallest when I first joined Parkside and now I’mgoing be the smallest all over again’. Emily

Preparation for secondary school

The importance for all children of having a best friend and belonging to a social group isemphasised in the work of Furman (1989) and Cotterell (1996). Cotterell comments on howthe stress of transfer becomes more intense when students fail to relinquish theirattachments to primary schools. He goes on to suggest that such students find it difficult toinvest themselves emotionally in a group of new teachers or class-mates. Cotterell furthermaintains that they need friendship in order to make sense of a new situation and tosupport the development of their own identity. He sees the school as a major place wherepeer relationships are formed as well as the arena where future social identities areshaped. A consideration of the type of induction our respondents received in preparingthem for secondary school transfer revealed scant attention being paid to the issue of peerrelations or the importance of friendship within this process.

When considering the type of induction our respondents received in preparing them forsecondary school it was evident that headteachers focused upon issues concerningbehaviour, curriculum matters and academic issues, paying little attention to peerrelations or the importance of friendship within the process. The only acknowledgementof friendship matters was when secondary liaison teachers consulted with their primarycolleagues about which children should or should not be placed together in the same tutorgroups at secondary school. The absence of any direct consultation with the childreninvolved, demonstrates the low priority given to this aspect of transfer.

Furthermore in one of our sample schools a secondary headteacher was invited to talk tothe primary school group about their impending transfer. An analysis of the type ofquestions asked by the boys revealed that they were less preoccupied with academicconcerns and focused upon social relations and the school environment. At anothersecondary school, parents of prospective girl students were informed by the headteacherthat the making and breaking of friendships of girls when they entered secondary schoolwas an inevitable part of this stage of schooling, and therefore should not be seen as acause of anxiety.

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Both of these headteachers failed to acknowledge the impact that peer relationships has onboys and girls when adjusting to a new environment. Rather, they adhered to an agendawhich continued to place a greater emphasis on the regulatory framework of the curriculumand the behaviour of students. Such an agenda, we believe is a cause for concern.

Negotiating a new environment

As the year wore on the pupils found that most things were not as bad as they had been led to expect.Most pupils were able to cope with their work. Teachers were, for the most part, as friendly as their oldones, and once they had {mastered} the new rules, the children’s anxiety began to disappear. (Galton andWillcocks, 1989: 173)

In the interviews conducted at the secondary phase the newly inducted secondary studentsexpressed a degree of relief as having survived their first term. However some of the groupdescribed this term as lonely and unsettling. Talking to our student group after one term insecondary school provided evidence that the issues and concerns they expressed in primaryschool continued to be the basis through which they mediated their secondary schoolexperience. Again, the curriculum did not feature in any discussion, but the social andenvironmental predominated, ‘I didn’t really know anybody and I might not have been in the sameclass as Farid, Iktar and Masum but it was great, they helped me and I also helped them’. Kelvin

At this point all of the boys were very positive about having made new friends and nonereported any personal bullying or harassment. One needs to be aware however, that theymight not have felt comfortable admitting this, and is possibly evidence of males beingunwilling to express their anxieties. Their focus reflected environmental concerns aboutthe school; for example, Aj, viewed by his primary school teachers as an academically andsocially able pupil, reported that, ‘It is much harder. There are lots of bigger people. It is morechallenging in all areas, more competitive to get into school teams’.

Whilst Motahir, identified by his primary school teacher as a rather insecure andsomewhat vulnerable boy, describes his first day in his new environment: ‘We started offwith the uniform, and they gave us a badge with the name of the school. Then we go to the meetingroom and we talk about where we are going to go. I felt sad’.

In the girls’ case, two of them reported that they had not really made any new friends norhad they maintained existing friendships from primary school. In the case of Juliet whohad seemingly been a content, academically able and reasonably popular girl, although onthe periphery of her friendship group at primary school, had found herself isolated,unhappy and disempowered by her new secondary school. So acute was her lonelinessthat she was ready to leave the school by the end of this first term. Karen, a popular girl atprimary school, reported feeling unsupported and lost by the school system. Both Juliet’sand Karen’s experience serves to underline the critical importance of making friends forenhancing self esteem and confidence. Their experience also illustrates that, conversely, ifyou do not make friends the potentially damaging effect on identity formation, confidenceand achievement is immeasurable.

Our small-scale study highlights the value that all our respondents placed upon theimportance of being part of a group, and the sense of belonging and connectedness that

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friendship brings. From the responses of the informants, it became clear that the need forpeer support and help became more acute with transition to secondary school. Choices ofsuitable allies as friends and being accepted as part of a group are critical for survival andfor a reduction in feelings of vulnerability. As the case of Juliet above illustrates, non-acceptance and rejection by the group can result in long-term isolation and a heighteningof a sense anxiety. Alum’s expectations for secondary school underline the need for criticalattention to be paid to all aspects of transfer— ‘I am concerned about getting into a big fight orbullied by a big boy, or getting into a big mess, or suspended for a day. Or getting into police troubleor into drug smuggling’. Alum

Whether or not these fears are a true reflection of life in the secondary school, they are realenough for Alum as he experiences them. The emphasis on the structural arrangements oftransfer as currently advocated are of little use if boys like Alum are carrying around suchfears of secondary school as dangerous environments where all things are possible. It ishard to imagine how Alum can even begin to function academically or socially if hebelieves his welfare is so endangered.

Conclusion

As schools are seen as one of the major sites where peer relationships are formed, as wellas the arena where future social identities are shaped, we would suggest that boys andgirls need such friendships in order to make sense of their new situation and in thedevelopment of their own identity.

At the time of transfer from primary to secondary school there is an intensified desire byall students to belong to, and conform to the peer group. Hargreaves and others maintainsthat ‘Schools must recognise that the peer group is highly influential for young adolescents and thatit can be, at one and the same time, both a major distraction and a powerful ally in the educationalprocess.’ (1996: 12).

The dominant policy discourses relating to secondary school transfer have reflectedcurrent governmental concerns with raising academic standards and sustaining progress.They draw upon research evidence (Galton and others, 1999, cited in Times EducationalSupplement (TES) 03.09. 99) which suggests that students lose ground at the point oftransfer.

Pupils in secondary schools frequently see the years between national key stage tests and publicexaminations as somehow less important and do not appreciate that working hard during these periodscan have pay-offs. They can become preoccupied with friendships and gain a reputation for messingaround; pupils who want to change from being a dosser to a worker find it extremely difficult to shake offtheir old image. Consequently they may decide to give up rather than catch up.

Whilst our study is not seeking to demonstrate the links between successful socialadjustment and academic success, there is a body of evidence that makes this association.For example Sebba (2000) in responding to concerns about academic progress at the pointof transition observes that students fail to maintain progress at the point of transferbecause of difficulties in adjusting to the new environment, losing old friends and makingnew ones, coping with a wider variety of teachers and different expectations of the

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teaching style. Moreover one secondary school teacher in the present study observed, ‘Youalways notice when the year 7 kids come in. It’s like a whole new way of life for them. If you canmake it easier for them socially to settle in then, in my opinion, they will find it easier academicallyas well . . . ’

Our study draws attention to the practices of teachers and school administrators and theirdistance from children’s feelings and experiences of friendships, and in particular theiranticipation or fear and loneliness in the transition stage. Schools and governments needto be more aware and value the students’ concerns about social issues concerningtransition, which we would suggest could ease the pathway.

It would appear from our research that for the students, the continuity and developmentof the curriculum are not as important as the continuity and development of peer grouprelations and friendships. The fear of being isolated or marginalised would seeminglyover-ride any other concerns.

Postscript

Whilst the data gathered for this study focused specifically on comparing girls’ and boy’sresponses to primary/secondary transfer, other significant themes have emerged from thedata. These themes have been developed and examined in each of the authors’ doctoraltheses and have informed their published works on peer relationships.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to John Head and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpfulcomments on earlier versions of this article.

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Achilles heel 21: 1–4.

Contributors’ details

Simon Pratt is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Education at London Metropolitan University.His specialist areas include primary education, the urban context and gender issues.

Rosalyn George is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Educational Studies at GoldsmithsCollege, University of London. Her teaching and research interests coalesce around issues of socialjustice and equity. She is an active member of the Anti Racist Teacher Education Network.

26 Simon Pratt and Rosalyn George

Copyright # 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. CHILDREN & SOCIETY Vol. 19, 16–26 (2005)