Girls and transition to second-level schooling in Ireland: 'moving on' and 'moving out'

This article explores how groups of Irish girls from different social class backgrounds negotiate the transition from first- to second-level schooling and seeks to understand how their classed and gendered identities are produced and reproduced at this time of change. We hope to argue that the school choice process, although highly significant, is only one step in a series of challenges that girls and their families must negotiate at this disjuncture in schooling. Having made a 'choice' and secured a place at second level, girls face a complex web of emotional, social and academic transitions that shape and are shaped by their social classed and gendered identities. While transition to second level is a highly significant move for all groups, it is especially challenging for groups of working-class girls who experience emotional pain and loss in leaving their familiar and familial primary schools. The experiences of female students suggest that they are included, excluded and differentiated on the basis of their adherence to and acceptance of dominant middle-class and gendered norms, particularly in convent, single-sex secondary schools. Girls' resistance to these controlling mechanisms within their schools leads to alienation and marginalisation even in this first year in the second-level system and signals a step towards moving out of the system while others move on.