Teaching Matters: The mother's face was wistful as she watched her newly tall and apparently self-assured daughter walk away from her. "Second year," she sighed. Looking at me, she added, "but then, as a teacher, you know all about that, don't you?" Well, yes and no.
While much of the attention focuses on first year in secondary school, more dramatic changes happen in second year. Teachers refer to it in resigned tones as the "hormones kicking in". For many girls, their interest in their studies declines suddenly, as a world of socialising, make-up, parties and guys opens up. For others, they begin to feel like social outcasts, if they are not quite ready to "get with the programme" yet.
All of this is, of necessity, anecdotal, confined to the experience of a particular school in a particular place. That is why research is valuable, particularly research that concentrates on the experience of young people themselves, and what they have to say about their experience of school.
Last May, in a follow-up to their excellent publication Moving Up, which looked at first years, the ESRI produced Pathways Through the Junior Cycle - The experiences of second year students. As the authors, Emer Smyth, Allison Dunne, Selina McCoy and Merike Darmody, freely admit, it only gives a partial picture of young people's lives, because it does not look at their experience of family and social life.
However, through interviews with key personnel and the young people themselves, some very interesting insights emerge. For someone who has always taught girls, it was revealing to see that in boys' schools, they refer to testosterone "kicking in". It made some sense of the repeated, and with any luck, greatly exaggerated claim by girls that a favourite hobby of second-year boys is beating up first-year boys.
Yet perhaps it is unwise to make jokes about bullying, particularly since bullying begins to emerge more strongly as a problem in second year.
The study indicates that fewer than a third of those who had experienced bullying in school had talked to someone about it. Even the greatest optimist would have to admit that two-thirds of bullying victims cannot be solving their problems themselves. Relatively small numbers (12 per cent) approached class teachers, while 6 per cent approached a year head. Students feel more comfortable approaching a teacher about an academic rather than a personal problem.
In what can amount to a mild form of bullying, students feel considerable pressure not to be seen as swots. Over half the students don't like people who show that they are clever in class. Around a third feel that it is more important to be part of a group than to do well, and these students are more likely to rate themselves as "below average" academically. Around a third are embarrassed by praise from a teacher, and about the same proportion will pretend not to have studied for a test so as not to look stupid if they don't do well.
So while it is not acceptable to be seen as struggling academically, neither is it acceptable to be studying too hard.
It also emerges very clearly that it is in second year that a pattern begins of engaging with work, or disengaging and beginning to drift. Those who get involved in study are more likely to be girls, to be from middle-class backgrounds, to have had higher prior ability levels, and to be in higher or mixed-ability streams. So if you are male, from a working-class background, with a lower ability level and in a lower stream class, your prospects do not look bright for academic success. This points to the need for greater supports for weaker pupils, but also to a need to examine whether the junior cycle syllabus is adequately meeting the needs of all students.
Unsurprisingly, given the increased complexity of the teacher role, teachers who took part in the research repeatedly call for more access to support from other professionals for children with behavioural and other problems. For example, every school should have a home-school liaison person. It is seen as only necessary in disadvantaged schools, but given the changes in Irish society, it is now necessary in every school. It means that parents, too, have a link into the school system, which they often find far more inaccessible at second level than at primary level.
Are there any pointers for parents here?
Not specifically in the study, but there are some common-sense conclusions that can be drawn. Don't become too complacent just because your child seems to have weathered the transition from primary to secondary school. If second year is the year when he or she will either begin to engage more deeply with school work, or begin a drift that may be hard to reverse, it obviously pays to keep a close eye on what is happening.
"Know your child" remains the best advice, closely followed by "know your child's friends". Given that the peer group is becoming more important, if he or she is hanging out with a group where it is uncool to be seen to be studying, that will have a far greater impact than anything you say.
Parenting a second-year student is a kind of intricate dance, stepping nimbly between maintaining boundaries and allowing for greater independence. And when the going gets tough, take comfort in the fact that most young people emerge unscathed from this difficult, in-between, year.
•Breda O'Brien teaches at Dominican College, Muckross Park, Dublin.
