Coordination strategies - Module 5

1.1. Challenges faced by families in the transition from primary school to secondary school

Transition from primary to secondary school can be a challenge for many students as well as for their families. The adolescence is a period of physical and intellectual development that can wake difficult feelings to children understand and to their parents deal with.

According to (O’Halloran, 2010). Hargreaves et al. (1996, cited in O’Brien, 2003) there is a simultaneous triple transition: 

• the move from one school to another, sometimes in a different geographical location;

• the move from one peer group to new peer groupings;

• the important succession of childhood into adolescence.

This period of transition is even more challenging to children with autism and consequently to their parents. Many of the challenges faced by children are overvalued by their parents. 

However, outcomes are likely to vary depending on children’s specific strengths and difficulties (Maras & Aveling, 2006).

Adaptation to changes make it harder for the children with autism to meet the social challenges of the transition to a new school:

• A different school building, possibly larger than the primary school, far from their home;

• Perhaps the need to use public transportation; 

• Many classrooms instead of one.

Children in the spectrum will have to learn where are the different school services available to students (reprography, bar / canteen, secretary, library) and above all how to use these services.

In the new school they will have to:

• find new classes;

• adapt to new routines, timetables and different schedules for each day of the week;

• meet new teachers and their different approaches, new colleagues, meet a much larger number of students;

• make new friends;

• understand new rules and norms.

Since early childhood there can be a strong link between mother/father and the child. The authors of the 50s in the last century, Wing, L., Gould, J., Frith, U. or later Jordan, R., pointed out in their studies that professionals and parents must be involved as partners in the process of education of the child. From their pioneer studies on, that is an unquestionable truth.

If there is a good relationship among the children, their family and the professionals, the challenges the children face can be positively influenced by the family and they will be more confident to face the new experience in the new school.