Blog post. New ways of supporting children and young people’s school transitions during the pandemic?

As Scotland prepares the route map for coming out of lockdown, the First Minister, highlighted the importance of prioritising those children and young people’s return to school who are to transition to primary school or primary to secondary schools. This focus on transitions, to a transitions researcher like me, is heartening. However, it is also tinged with concerns about whether there is a clear understanding of what transitions mean, i.e., they are not only experienced when children and young people ‘physically move’ to a new school. Everyone experiences transitions all the time and therefore we need to consider all children and young people’s transitions, as well as those of significant others.