Supporting international new arrival students’ transition into UK secondary schools: Appreciatively exploring educational professionals’ perspectives

The transition of International New Arrival (INA) students into UK schools is an increasingly relevant topic, with the most recent statistics showing that 896,000 school-aged children and young people are born abroad (ONS, 2023). However, the socio-political context of migration often frames new arrivals through a deficit lens. Research in the UK has emphasised the importance of understanding INA students' transition experiences. Staff support has consistently been noted as a factor in improving transition experiences (Bhardwaj, 2022; O’Shea, 2018), with research indicating that positive transition experiences contribute to a sense of belonging, acculturation, mental health, social inclusion, and academic achievement (O’Shea, 2018; Cartmell, 2013; Burcham, 2009; Wong, 2020). Therefore, understanding what educational professionals constitute as a positive transition and the best practices in their support, appears timely and essential.

This research took an appreciative approach and offered an alternative to deficit-based narratives, by seeking to uncover strengths within practice. The study was guided by three research questions: (1) How do educational professionals understand positive transition? (2) What do they perceive as best practice? (3) What can be learned to improve future support for INA students' transition?

Six participants, working across the local authority and secondary schools in a variety of roles, engaged in appreciative interviews reflecting on a positive experience of supporting the transition of INA students. The data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2022), generating four overarching themes and eleven interrelated sub-themes. The discussion section of this thesis examined the research questions, recognising that participants' understandings of positive transition and their perceptions of best practice in supporting INA students were highly interconnected. Drawing on these insights, the study critically considered what could be learned to enhance future support for INA students entering UK secondary schools as well as implications for Educational Psychology practice.