A study of 593 found “substantial instability” in their friendships as they changed schools, with only 27% keeping the same best friend.
But the ones who did achieved better results and had fewer behaviour issues. The researchers compared what they said about their friendships with how they performed in end of Year 7 assessments.
During the transition to secondary, children may be more likely to lose best friends prematurely due to imposed school change rather than conflict or low-quality relationships, which may be the prevailing reasons under normal circumstances. Some commentators have suggested that the secondary transition may be a good opportunity to break ties with low-quality friendships because of the negative effects these can have. But little research has looked at the impact of keeping high quality friends.
The study found that children who kept the same best friend over the transition tend to do better at school.
Main Points:
- There was substantial instability in children’s friendships as they moved from primary to secondary school, with 73% reporting a different best friend 1 year later.
- About a quarter of children kept the same best friend until the end of the first year of secondary school (27%).
- Most of the best friends named by participants were attending the same school as the participant (i.e., 87% during primary school and 84% during secondary school), suggesting schools are an important influence on children’s friendships.
- Having a stable best friend was associated with higher academic attainment and fewer symptoms of conduct problems at the end of the first year of secondary school.
- The effects of maintaining a best friend can be interpreted as increasing academic attainment by 0.13 SDs and reducing conduct problems by half a symptom point.
- Keeping the same best friend was not associated with benefits to emotional mental health, but maintaining other lower-quality friendships was linked to worsening emotional health across the transition.
- Friendships fulfil a number of important functions for young adolescents, influencing feelings of self-worth and buffering against life stress.
- Poor and moderate quality friendships may be risk factors for depressive disorders in school-aged children and recommendations that ameliorating poorer quality friendships may be an important therapeutic focus for children experiencing emotional difficulties.
- Friendships have been linked to mental health and school attainment in children. Good quality friendships provide children with companionship and support and are associated with a range of developmental advantages including better mental health and academic functioning.
- Children who kept the same best friend had higher academic attainment and lower levels of conduct problems.
- Exploratory analyses indicated that secondary school policies that group children based on friendships may support friendship stability.
- Helping maintain children’s best friendships during the transition to secondary school may contribute to higher academic performance and better mental health.
- While good quality relationships with family members support positive development, friendships differ in important ways. For instance, they are more likely to be egalitarian and voluntary and, in particular, are much more liable to dissolution.
- One of the important features of good quality friendships is that they provide emotional support in challenging situations such as school transitions.
- Stable friendships that are also high quality may be expected to confer beneficial effects on mental health outcomes over the transition to secondary school – a period recognised as challenging, involving a degree of apprehension for all pupils and where difficulties may have long-lasting effects on functioning and mental health.
- Poor-quality friendships have been identified as a risk factor for the onset and persistence of depressive disorders in school-aged children.
- Retrospective reports of social difficulties during the secondary school transition have been linked to poorer mental health, but school transition research has not yet paid attention to the impact of friendship stability and loss on children’s mental health and academic attainment.
- While all primary and secondary schools in the United Kingdom employ some measures to support pupils making the transition from primary to secondary school, it is recognized that there is considerable between-school variation in the approach taken.
- Secondary schools vary in the extent to which they actively support pupil friendships during transition and teachers appear to differ in their attitudes about the importance of maintaining existing friendships across the transition compared to forming new friendships at secondary school.
- When deciding which pupils to allocate to each class/form group, some schools encourage children and parents to nominate friends that they would like to remain with, while other schools do not allow input from children and parents.
Conclusion
Maintaining a stable best friend is associated with some mental health and academic benefits for children during the transition to secondary school, an important period of adaptation that is stressful for many and which predicts children’s longer-term outcomes.
The procedures schools employ for supporting existing friendships over the transition are linked to rates of friendship stability and deserve more research attention.