Introduction

Among the various things that may have changed in adolescent lives over the last 30 years are secondary school experiences. Education constitutes a vast and significant social institution with which young people are directly engaged for a great deal of time (indeed, approximately 15,000 hours; see Rutter et al, 1979). We have to start with an assumption that it matters, and if so, that changes in educational experiences may matter for changes in social and emotional well-being.

But what do we know about whether school experiences are significant for the kinds of outcomes we are interested in? Does schooling matter for mental health? There are two major issues here that we could be interested in. First, there is the question about school ‘in general’, including the types of schools available, how children are allocated to them, the way in which the day is organised, the type of teaching, the ethos of encouragement and discipline, testing requirements, the social mix and academic streaming options. All these might have changed.

Second, there are the major indices of movement around the education system, the system of transitions and transfers, both between and within schools. By this we mean the transition into secondary school (called ‘transfer’ in the USA), the transition within school into, for example, the GCSE teaching years, and the transition at age 16 at the point when compulsory education ends in the UK. At this point the transition may be out of the system, or it may be into more education. Educational transitions can be regarded as ‘flash points’, highlighting particular issues and challenges in getting education right for all young people. Both transition into secondary school and transition at age 16 represent times when cracks in the system might be particularly obvious, and when vulnerabilities can become amplified. On the other hand, they offer opportunities and chances to change track, and they represent the closest thing we have in the UK today to formal adolescent ‘rites of passage’. They may offer a prism through which to assess school effects, and they may also have impacts that are rather separate from those of other educational experiences. They offer an interesting chance to explore what has been going on in adolescent education.