ABSTRACT
When Alice climbed through the looking glass, she found that although the new room was similar in some respects to the old one, it was also far more interesting and exciting. One would like to think that this is a suitable metaphor for what happens when a pupil leaves the primary school and starts at the ‘big’ school. There may be similarities with what has gone before, but it should also be an adventure, a challenge, and a source of new experiences. This may be the case for some pupils, but the complexities of transition to the secondary school continue to concern teachers, pupils, researchers and policy makers.
