The findings come from a study which followed almost 600 children during and after their transition to 10 secondary schools in England.
It found “substantial instability” in children’s friendships as they moved from primary to secondary school, with only 27 per cent keeping the same best friend until the end of the first year of secondary school.
However, those children who did maintain the same friends tended to do better academically and showed lower levels of behavioural problems – even after taking into account the children’s earlier levels of academic attainment and any behaviour problems at primary school.
The research has been led by Dr Terry Ng-Knight from the School of Psychology at the University of Surrey and was published last week in the British Journal of Educational Psychology.
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