From the bush to the big smoke: The transition to secondary school for our rural boarders

Hannah Calcino

Student Wellbeing Coordinator (Boarding)

FROM THE BUSH TO THE BIG SMOKE:

The transition to secondary school for our rural boarders

SUNATA 10

The transition to secondary school is signposted as one of the most significant events to occur in an adolescent’s life. Couple the change in routine, school format and academic expectations with major physiological and psychological changes and it is easy to see why children perceive the transition from primary school to secondary school as daunting. In a study titled Transition to secondary school: Expectation versus experience, statistics showed that only 50 per cent of Year 7 students* anticipated a positive transition to secondary school. However, post transition, almost 70 per cent of students reported a positive transitional experience (Waters, Lester & Cross 2014). This means that there is a pre-transition perception that the change from primary school to secondary school is going to be more difficult than it actually is and is often clouded with more worry and trepidation than is necessary. Typically, the success of the primary to secondary schooling transition is founded on positive peer relationships, positive perceptions towards schooling and change, and a stable state of mental health (Hall & DiPerna 2017). While the transition to secondary school is described as a normative change – meaning the timing and planning of such an event is predictable and something most children experience – the relocation to attend boarding school is described as nonnormative and is considered a potentially stressful life event (Downs 2001). This means that students entering boarding school at the beginning of their secondary schooling are experiencing two major life events at the same time. The culminating component of my Masters of Education was the development of a research project. Having seen the challenges faced by Year 7 boarders, both in the classroom and boarding house, I wanted to explore the students’ perspective of their transition and identify what boarding schools can do to ensure a holistic transitional experience for rural Year 7 students entering a metropolitan boarding school. 2021 Year 7 boarders were invited to participate in the data collection based on their status as ‘rural Australians’. Their status was determined using the Remoteness Areas Scale derived from the Australian Bureau of Statistics using Australia’s Accessibility and Remoteness Index (ARIA+). Eight students participated in the data collection—three of these participants identified as First Nations people. None of the participants had attended boarding school during their primary schooling. The data was collected on Wednesday 10 November 2021. At the data collection point, students were in Week 6 of Term 4, having nearly completed their first full year of boarding school. The research was gathered through a mixed method. A mixedmethod data collection can improve evaluation by allowing the limitations of one type of data to be balanced by the strengths (Greene 2007). This ensured that results accurately reflected the perspectives of the students. In addition, parallel data gathering was used to collect the data, with participants engaging in a focus group discussion before completing a quantitative survey in the same sitting. The data collection posed questions relating to participants likes and dislikes of boarding school, how they have adjusted academically and socially to boarding school, and their thoughts surrounding communal living, homesickness, and school staff.

There were several key themes to emerge from the data collection and analysis, four of which are particularly relevant for staff working within a boarding school.

Creating community

The concept of cultivating a community within the boarding house is pivotal to the transition experience for Year 7 boarders. The idea of community cultivation refers to the factors that impact and help formulate a community and environment where students feel safe and included. The physical environment, changes in one’s community identity, role dynamics, and the impact of staff were all contributing factors to creating the boarding house community. The impact of the physical environment was an interesting theme that emerged during the focus group discussion. The metropolitan location and lack of open space were identified by participants as reasons to dislike boarding school. This is corroborated by Downs (2001), who identified in their research that there is a poignant need for access to open, outdoor spaces for privacy and spatial autonomy for rural Australian youth. Students who disliked the urban landscape found adjusting to their new environment challenging. There were varied responses when participants were asked whether living in a group environment had been a reason for feeling sad during their time at boarding school. Six participants stated that they never or rarely felt like the communal living situation resulted in them feeling sad, while two participants said that it often or sometimes did. Even though students

didn’t strongly relate to having troubles while living in a group environment, perhaps that is due to them not recognising the impact that living communally has on friendships and group dynamics. For example, several participants spoke about how sometimes personal news travelled beyond the select group it may have been shared with (albeit with no ill intent) to girls in other grades in the boarding house and sometimes into the day school. While sharing personal information is typical teenage behaviour, it can be exacerbated when living in a group environment. Therefore, it is important to recognise that communal living may implicitly impact other facets of the transition to boarding school, such as forming friendships and fitting in. Wider research has made it evident that self-concept, selfesteem, and identity can significantly impact academic success, forming friendships, and transitioning to boarding school, as it disrupts the development of place identity and building a sense of belonging (Downs 2001, Waters 2014, Martin et al. 2014). Finding where a child fits within their new community can also be a challenge for boarding students. The data collection acknowledged that many participants missed their home community, which contributed to homesickness. The community of a boarding house was a foreign environment for all participants, meaning that settling in and finding their role within what is essentially a large ‘family unit’ would have been difficult and added to their sense of unease and missing their home community. The dynamics between the younger and older boarders and the associated change in familial role dynamics for some participants would have contributed to their social transition. However, most participants saw the mentor and big sister-like role adopted by the older boarders as a largely positive experience. This is pleasing, as strong inter-personal relationships would have formed between students across year levels. In addition, older students would have offered another avenue of support and empathised with transitioning.

Academic stressors

The academic struggles and stressors for participants was a normative and expected result, with most students identifying that they found schoolwork more complex than their primary school. This result was expected as research demonstrates that inner-city students make up to two years more progress across the board than regional and rural students (Goss et al. 2015). This divide and increased academic expectations when entering secondary school would have contributed to participants struggling with the workload and assessment of a metropolitan boarding school. Despite the difficulties participants faced academically, it was pleasing that students noted that their study habits had improved thanks to formalised homework time and that they felt equipped with study skills to manage the increased academic load.

Making friends

Results demonstrated that friendship issues were not a prominent feature within the boarding house and participants reported that while they found it easy to make friends with fellow boarders, making friends with day students was more difficult. Students reported that it was much easier to make friends with other boarding students as they felt they had more in common with these girls. One can assume that living in a communal environment would also allow friendships to flourish and stronger bonds to develop. They would have a sense of camaraderie and face similar challenges. Participants found it more difficult to develop friendships with the day girls as they noted that the day girls had already formed strong friendship groups, and they thought they didn’t have much in common with the day girls. However, the most significant factor contributing to the participants’ difficulty in forming a friendship with day girls is perception. Based on the language used to describe the day girls during the focus group discussion, the boarders were intimidated by the already established day girl friendship groups and had perceived that they were different to the day girls. Once the boarders started to develop friendships with the day girls, they recognised that they weren’t that different. In fact, friendships with day girls allowed them to be friends with different people and provided a support system beyond the boarding house when needed.

Takeaways for school staff

The most valuable piece of knowledge that school staff can have when understanding the transition for rural students to boarding school is that these students are trying to juggle two large changes simultaneously. Starting at a new school is daunting, let alone moving into a boarding house that is unfamiliar and typically in a geographic location that is vastly different to what feels like ‘home’. The good news is that children raised in rural environments are typically more resilient than their metropolitan counterparts and, for many, they have known their entire life that they would eventually attend boarding school. Acting with empathy and care, which is what we as St Margaret’s staff do best, and understanding the challenges our boarders face make all the difference in helping our rural students find their place in the hustle and bustle of a metropolitan school. *Data collected while Year 7 was still the final year of primary school.

References

Downs, J 2001, Coping with Change: Adolescents’ experience of the transition to secondary and boarding school, viewed 20 February 2021, https://researchonline.jcu.edu.au/28060/1/28060_Downs_2001_ thesis.pdf Goss, Pt, Sonnemann, J, Chisholm, C & Nelson, L 2016, Widening Gaps: What NAPLAN tells us about student progress, Grattan Institute, viewed 15 February 2021, https://grattan.edu.au/wpcontent/ uploads/2016/03/937-Widening-gaps.pdf Greene, J 2007, Mixed Options in Social Inquiry, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco. Hall, GE & DiPerna, JC 2017, ‘Childhood social skills as predictors of middle school academic adjustment’, Early Adolescence, vol. 37, pp. 825-851. Martin, AJ, Papworth, B, Ginns, P & Liem, GAD 2014, ‘Boarding school, motivation and engagement, and psychological well-being: A large-scale investigation’, American Educational Research Journal, vol. 51, pp. 1007-1049. Waters, SK, Lester, L & Cross, D 2014, ‘Transition to secondary school: Expectation versus experience’, Australian Journal of Education, vol. 58, no. 2, pp. 153-166. SUNATA 11