Supporting children’s emotional wellbeing over primary-secondary school transitions

The project will develop the first robust, sensitive, and standardised scale to assess children’s emotional wellbeing in the context of primary-secondary school transitions. This novel instrument will be named the Primary-Secondary School Transitions Emotional Wellbeing Scale (P-S WELLS) and will add distinct value at a community level by developing a tool and manual to build capacity for educational practitioners to obtain immediate insight into the universal support their class needs and identification of specific children who need additional support.

Charlotte Bagnall

Charlotte Bagnall is Lecturer in the Psychology of Education, Manchester Institute of Education

View academic profile

Primary-secondary school transitions are a critical period for children, that pose heightened risk for the development of poor emotional wellbeing and mental health. Our ability to identify and support children during this critical juncture is limited, however, by the lack of a robust, sensitive, and standardised scale to measure children’s emotional wellbeing in the context of primary-secondary school transitions, comprehensively and longitudinally. This is inhibiting empirical progress within the field, our ability to best support children in practice, and likely leading to policies and practices that are not fit for purpose.

The Primary-Secondary school Transitions Emotional Wellbeing Scale (P-S WELLS), has been developed following a multi-informant, mixed-methods model to overcome this gap, and will add distinct value in research and practice, through the additional objectives:

1. To develop a clear theoretical and conceptual definition of emotional wellbeing in the context of primary-secondary school transitions and operationalise this conceptual domain through the design of P-S WELLS
   P-S WELLS will holistically conceptualise and assess children’s feelings towards the changes that they are negotiating in context.
2. To pilot and conduct longitudinal psychometric assessment and longitudinal validation on two discrete samples, across two primary-secondary school transitions periods.
   P-S WELLS will innovate the field methodologically by demonstrating the importance and viability of considering longitudinal contexts within the design of measures, to ensure measures are stable and sensitive to be able to clearly capture change over time.
3. To develop a P-S WELLS manual for use in schools, including CPD opportunities to administer, score and interpret the measurement.
   P-S WELLS will add distinct value at the wider community level, by designing a tool and manual to build capacity for educational practitioners to obtain immediate insight into the emotional wellbeing of their class in the context of primary-secondary school transitions.

How we’re making a difference

P-S WELLS aims to offer theoretical and conceptual novelty by demonstrating a vital paradigm shift in conceptualising emotional wellbeing in a specific context (primary-secondary school transitions). Providing a model of emotional wellbeing in context will build capacity in the field of child mental health research, by focussing on how children emotionally respond to the context of primary-secondary school transitions and the specific emotional reactions evoked.

P-S WELLS will provide an innovative methodological tool to: a) evaluate the efficacy of pre-existing emotional wellbeing and mental health support interventions in the context of primary-secondary school transitions through robust randomised control trials; b) refine the content and delivery of pre-existing programmes, by strengthening the methodological and conceptual foundations that underpin primary-secondary school transitions and mental health research, and c) provide the means for sensitive identification of ‘at risk’ children to participate in targeted interventions.

Recognising that approximately 750,000 pupils start secondary school annually in the UK, the scale and importance of supporting primary-secondary school transitions effectively cannot be over-stated, and P-S WELLS will have practical utility to be administered and scored within schools on a whole-class basis, to enable educational practitioners to obtain immediate insight into universal support their class needs and identification of specific children who need additional emotional wellbeing support.