‘When you looked at me, you didn’t judge me’: supporting transient students and their families in New Zealand primary schools

Abstract

With its highly mobile population, especially amongst those groups already economically and socially marginalised, New Zealand has a growing group of children who are at risk socially, behaviourally and educationally because of the transient nature of their family situations. This article reports on a study conducted by the Education Review Office of 11 case-study primary schools that demonstrated good practice in supporting transient students and their families to make successful transitions into a new school setting. The findings are reported under five headings that highlight the key themes: school culture, school leadership, relationships with families, effective teaching and full service social support. Schools that worked successfully with transient students and their families were not limited to those that had specific initiatives in place but were also those that had an inclusive school culture with appropriate systems and processes for all students.

Keywords:

• transient students
• school culture
• social support

Acknowledgements

The ERO conducts individual school, Māori-medium and early childhood reviews in state-funded pre-tertiary education institutions. Review Officers are also asked to gather data to contribute to broader evaluations on topics of national interest. Many Review Officers would have contributed to the first round of data from which the case-study schools were chosen and the authors of this article would like to thank them for their contributions and the ERO for its support.