This paper contributes a greater understanding of the importance of a sense of
competence, autonomy and relatedness to children experiencing the primarysecondary schooling transition, drawing on the perspectives of the young people
themselves. We address how the perspectives of transitioning children can further
substantiate and illuminate Ryan and Deci’s Self Determination Theory (SDT; Ryan
and Deci, 2019). SDT claims that satisfaction of a person’s needs for competence
(attainment and confidence), autonomy (self-direction and capacity to critique) and
relatedness (feeling affectively bonded to others) allows them to achieve ‘positiveexperience and wellness outcomes’ (p.219). We draw on data from two research
projects, one a survey study of 288 transitioning children; and one a life-history study of
23 transitioning children. Our findings illustrated the potential benefits of policymakers
giving priority to a wider range of conceptions of competence beyond attainment in
mathematics/English, in order to support transitioning children’s sense of competence
including their self-confidence. Findings also highlighted the need to nurture children’s
capacity to recognise and direct their own schooling trajectories more autonomously,
directing their energies into engagement with learning and relationships rather than
into riling against controls or seeking to avoid humiliation and punishment. Most
positively, our data manifested children’s high levels of relatedness to both peers
and teachers as they transitioned to new secondary schools. And above all, our data
emphasised and exemplified the need for relatedness to accompany children’s strong
sense of competence and autonomy during transition
