Transition from primary to secondary school for students with specific learning disabilities

Transition from elementary school to secondary school is an important milestone for every adolescent, especially for students with special needs. For successful transition from one educational level to another, these adolescents need support and cooperation of teachers, counsellors, parents and management on both levels. Therefore, in the theoretical part of the thesis, I focused foremost on educational transitions up to the secondary school. I have examined the process and characteristics of each transition to a higher level of education, risk factors and reasons for them, the most frequent problems connected with the transition, how pupils and students deal with them, especially those which are officially recognised to have special needs due to deficits on certain areas of learning. I have tried to find as many strategies as possible for overcoming the obstacles that arise at the transition, both for general population of pupils and for pupils with special needs. Every group of students reacts differently to educational transition; therefore I decided to examine how students of the first year of secondary school did react to the transition. Therefore I have distributed interviews to 12 secondary school students with deficits in certain areas of learning and 12 secondary school students that do not have any recognized learning disabilities. I have conducted the research in the area of Podravje region with students that go to vocational schools, because I have predicted to obtain a larger sample of students with special needs. With the questionnaire I have tried to establish whether students in Slovene secondary schools have same issues with the transition from primary to secondary school (decline in achievement levels, inappropriate and violent behaviour, drop out, anxiety, etc.) as elsewhere. I was especially interested in the means of coping with the transitional problems in the area of performance, overcoming of fears caused by the transition, integration into the class, which group of students struggles harder with the consequences of the problems caused by transition to secondary school. The research has shown that there are not any statistically relevant differences in struggling with the problems caused by the transition, except in the area of integration into the class, where 8 students with deficits in certain areas of learning needed help; not one of the students without learning disabilities did not need or seek help for better integration into the class