This paper presents a critical review of studies delineating the major characteristics of school phobic children. This work focusses on data relevant to the incidence of school phobia, age, sex, ethnic, religious, and social class backgrounds of these children and their families, birth order, intelligence, and academic achievement, presence and nature of precipitating events leading to phobic episodes and onset of related symptoms, and personality characteristics. There have been few systematic surveys of school phobic children so little is known about these characteristics; much work has produced equivocal results. The only consistent agreement is that school phobic children are typically more dependent, anxious, immature, and depressed than nonphobic children.