Pathways and Choice: Transitions at Sunny Beach College

Abstract

This chapter reports on a case study of one particular secondary school, Sunny Beach College, as it responds to, and enacts, a particular policy on students’ transition from school to post-school life. It does so in a context where current national and international policies stress the importance of providing clear and diverse pathways to facilitate students’ successful transitions. It details how the college used a key element of the policy, the SET planning process, as a catalyst for changing the senior secondary program in order to ensure that multiple pathways, both academic and vocational, were offered to students. Interviews reveal that both students and staff at Sunny Beach College saw successful transitions as a linear process that resulted in students ‘earning or learning’. However, this process did not depend on a single pathway. Rather, it was seen to be the result of a multiplicity of possible pathways, many of which were facilitated by the school. That is, Sunny Beach College offered an educational context that facilitated the making of such linear transitions. Further, the students and teachers at Sunny Beach College recognised and accepted agency for their part in the interplay of individual decisions and pathways, which is inherent in the transition process. The findings of this chapter demonstrate the pervasiveness of discourses on linear transition and on individualism in both education policies and in the everyday lives of students and teachers as they enact transition policy. However, the chapter also provides evidence that such linear transitions are facilitated in institutional contexts such as Sunny Beach College. The findings point to the importance of the social context in the transition process and to the need for a consideration of context for understanding issues impacting on making a successful transition to post-school life.