‘If I play I won’t learn’: Children’s perceptions and experiences of transition and school readiness from Maternelle to Year 1

How children experience the major transition from pre-school to compulsory schooling influences their immediate and future success and wellbeing. This complex process of change and adaptation is impacted by school readiness policy drivers, which prioritise children’s performance and achievement. Pedagogic and curriculum progression shifts from play to work, with structured and adult-led activities. These factors contribute to the schoolification of early childhood education, and construct school readiness as an attribute of the child. This paper reports findings on how six children experienced transition and school readiness as they move from Maternelle to Year 1 in an International school in Belgium. Multimodal and multivocal methods of data collection were used to provide child participants with accessible ways of expressing their perspectives of the lived experience of transition. The children perceived the major transition being from play to work and understood that they were expected to be ready for this change. From a socio-cultural perspective, this paper argues that school readiness cannot be assessed at a specific point in time, but should instead be viewed as the lived experience of children that begins before, and continues well beyond the transition. Children are expected to adapt to multiple changes in curriculum and pedagogical practices, as well as changes in cultural, temporal and material contexts. It is recommended that critical questions about how school readiness is constructed should take account of children’s perspectives and experiences of transitions.