The thought of starting high school had 12-year-old Eli Wegenaar “shaking in his boots”.

The Harbord Public School student had a bad case of pre-high school jitters – a common experience, said vice principal Priscilla Wright, who noticed year 6 students struggled with fear of the transition.

“Everyone for years had been saying ‘we are not doing this right’,” Wright said, adding there had been a rise in students skipping school. “We just lost the kids in term four. They were disengaged, there were behaviour issues, lots of anxiety.”

To tackle the problem, the school reformatted term four to resemble high school and gave students more responsibilities.

Backed by UNSW research, the children were given their own timetable, had a new teacher for each subject, and were told to take responsib

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