Old anticipations, new anxieties? A contemporary perspective on primary to secondary transfer

Abstract

The transfer from primary to secondary school in England and Wales is a status passage, from child to teenager. Research on the anxieties and anticipations surrounding that transfer over a 30-year period shows continuities and discontinuities. As well as the contrast of sociological approaches, the perceptions of children in 1977–1978 and 2003–2004 are compared to explore whether their anxieties and anticipations have changed. The transfer studies conducted by Galton in the 1970s are shown to have revealed concerns and enthusiasms among children that are an enduring feature of British pupils’ lives. Two different sociological approaches to researching children are contrasted, one current in the 1970s, the other predominant in the new century.

Keywords:

• primary school
• secondary school
• school transfer
• anxieties
• anticipations
• ethnography

Acknowledgements

Mrs Rosemary Bartle Jones and Ms Angela Jones word-processed the paper, for which we are grateful. The first ORACLE Project was funded by the ESRC from 1976–1981. Mellor’s PhD was also ESRC-funded.