The Challenges Junior High School Transferees Face In The Philippines

According to Webster’s Dictionary the literal root word transfer to “convey from one person, place, or situation to another, to cause to pass from one to another”. The Cambridge Dictionary defines a transfer student as “a student who comes to a university or school after having begun his or her course of study at a different university or school”. A transfer student may have different reasons as to why they’re transferring. The most common reasons being financial complications, the family’s decision of moving out from a small town, personal reasons depending on the individual, the individual’s current school doesn’t offer the specific course he/she would like to take, and many others.

For these reasons, school transitions may be requisite, which will result in a variety of behavioral and psychological changes; there is also a change between relationships with peers, parents, and teachers. Anderman adds that the sudden change from what the learner is accustomed to will eventually make a change in the students’ motivation to learn, it may affect their academic performance and their general attitude towards school. Although others may have a peaceful transition, studies have shown that the majority of these transferees have stressful encounters. Mueller, an accredited child psychologist, also explains that kids find comfort in familiarity and routine, so new neighbors, a new bedroom, and a new school can all cause stress and anxiety; The general change in culture may also profoundly cause shock in the child, resulting to what we can define as culture shock.

School culture refers to the way teachers, other staff members, and students behave with a given set of beliefs, values, and assumptions they share.

Since culture is a collaboration of beliefs and values, the collaboration of these shared values must be in agreement in order to have good communication, an important factor in determining how students, teachers, and administrators behave in a scholarly setting. The culture of a school can be adjusted and transformed through the influence of a social force.

Confeld emphasizes that having a positive school culture is essential in a school environment, that although school cultures may be intangible, a positive school culture may provide a safe, supportive, encouraging, and inviting environment for students and staff, which in turn allows students’ academic performances to evolve. She adds that a positive school culture is relevant for not only the existing members of that institution, but it will also be of great significance to the adjustment of new students who enter that environment.

It has been previously mentioned that transfer shock may cause social isolation, and may hinder a learner’s emotional and social development. Ingram & London notes that humans are relational beings and that we have an innate need to feel connected to others, to feel like we belong. Sadly, this is a dark reality for transfer students. The pair also mentions that is Social isolation is also associated with mental and physical health effects such as cognitive decline, depression, increased blood pressure, increased risk for heart disease, sleep disturbances, higher cholesterol in young adolescents, lower self-esteem, and many more. But they also clarify that it will depend on that person’s personal status like age, gender, social support, perceived stress levels and etc.

Entering social circles may be the easiest way of solving this issue, but it may not be as easy as it seems. As quoted by Badger (2017) it is described that social circles is less of a circle and is more of an onion.

'You can imagine the different layers, from my perspective, there's a bunch of really close friends – these are the people who will drop everything, and rush to me if I'm in an emergency. That's the inner layer of the onion. The next layer is the really close friends, but they're not quite in that category. Then maybe there are looser friends.' Tsochas explains in his lecture once. Badger concludes that each individual has an inner circle, an outsider may find difficult to enter a social circle, especially if that circle has been established for quite some time.

Transferring to new schools is logical because a learner must explore educational opportunities available to them, opportunities that may cause the individual’s development in particular skills and talents. But it foreseeable that adjusting to a new academic environment is difficult, without question.

The struggles Filipino transfer students may be similar to those from other countries, but Le Peña clarifies that most of the struggles of a new student may just be caused by their own paranoid self, like some of them assuming that they are already hated from the very beginning and already shielding who they are from the start, which may lead to unintentionally isolating themselves from the rest of the groups of students.

To each student, there may be plenty of motives for transferring schools. but it is proven that financial complications may be the main cause for students to transfer from private to public schools, with the recent implementation of the K-12 system in the Philippine setting. It is recorded that in 2015, a lot of students are moving from private schools to public schools, this is confirmed by the Philippine Association of Private Schools, Colleges, and Universities. This increases the general percentage of transferees each year, confirmed by the Department of Education in 2019.