Most children with Williams syndrome (WS) have difficulties with anxiety when they reach the end of primary school and they often prefer a clear structure. School transition is an important milestone in children’s school career that can be stressful. Although transition to secondary school can provide new opportunities in terms of more independence and new topics to study, it also brings a lot of fear of the unknown in terms of friends, new teachers, as well as new environment.

In our recent project around school transition, parents, educators as well as children reported their concerns before the child with WS moved to a secondary school as well as after. Before the transition, children with WS were worried about their new physical environment (where toilets would be and what to do when you get ill), parents had more social concerns and wanted to know more about who else would be in their child’s classroom as well as worried about bullying, whilst teachers were more concerned about how the child would cope with new freedom and food.

Teachers and parents expressed the need for better planning around transitions and based on our research we would like to make the following suggestions:

• Start the discussion around the child’s school transition early (start of year 5)
• Plan for additional support that might need to be in place for meeting the child’s needs in secondary schools
• Visit a number of schools (with the child with WS if possible) and try and meet the transition co-ordinators to discuss your child’s needs and the transition plan.
• Ask the child’s new school to send a map of the school and pictures of teachers with short description of nice facts about the teachers and school.
• Ask the child’s current school to provide an overview of what they found worked well and what didn’t
• Provide the child’s new school with an overview of what the child likes/ doesn’t like where the child’s strengths lies (maybe the child with WS can do a presentation or take photos themselves of their strengths, weaknesses, interests and needs.

We are currently writing up the results of this study and hope to disseminate more detailed findings soon.

This research was funded by a grant by the Baily Thomas Charitable Trust  to Jo Van Herwegen (collaborators Dr Olympia Palikara, Maria Ashwort hand Elizabeth Burchell)