"A very big change": transition from primary to academic high school in Newcastle, New South Wales, from the 1930s to the 1950s

This article explores the primary to secondary school transition of 40 women and men who attended two single-sex academic high schools in Newcastle, New South Wales, from the 1930s to the 1950s. The researcher employs a blended methodology, including narrative and linguistic analysis of oral sources. Gender is explored as a foetor in the narratives of transition. The article shows how society, school and student interacted to make the primary to secondary school transition an important status passage in the lives of female and male students. Rather than being about gender, the transition to secondary education was about age, about becoming 'bigger'. Informants' experiences of this transition exhibited many of the characteristics of a 'rite of passage'.