Education transitions

Starting school is a common experience for millions of children around the world, but it is not the same for children everywhere.

Even in countries with well-developed early education services, transition from pre-school into primary school is often stressful for children and parents because of a lack of communication and coordination between two sectors that are governed by different management structures, organisation and financing, professional training, curricula and pedagogy. Ensuring effective coordination of transitions between pre-school and primary classes has been a major ECCE theme among the world’s richest countries over many decades. Addressing these issues is now a global challenge.

Young Lives’ work in this area has been funded by the Bernard van Leer Foundation to provide insight into the meaning of early childhood transitions from national, cultural and educational perspectives. This work is being developed further to consider how early life conditions affect children’s later development and transitions through schooling.