Criteria of the transition recommendation for children with special educational needs: A comparison of the importance of child-related, family-related, and school-structural characteristics

Abstract

At the end of an inclusive schooling in primary school, children with special educational needs (SEN) can transfer to grade 5 of a mainstream or special school. In many federal states, the decision lies with the parents, while teachers advise them and make a recommendation. Mostly, the parents will follow and trust the teacher’s advice and recommendation, even if they live in an area in which the teacher’s recommendation is non-binding. For children without SEN, contrary to legal requirements, the recommendation is not only connected with child-related, but also with family and school structural characteristics. That leads to a regional inequality in the transition from elementary to secondary school. For children with SEN, this is unexplored. In guided narrative-episodic interviews, 12 regular or special education teachers from North Rhine-Westphalia were interviewed about the transition of a child with SEN. In a content analysis, all three categories of criteria proved to be relevant for the recommendation, but with different weights and depending on the recommended type of school (inclusive vs. exclusive). It was not expected that the school criteria (esp. special support in mainstream schools) influenced the recommendation as much as the child-related criteria (esp. achievement, work habits, personality traits). Family criteria (esp. support) came up much less, but they influenced primarily the special school recommendations. The results are discussed with regard to social educational inequality.