As a primary-trained teacher who has spent the majority of
my career working with UKS2 children, I understand why this is the focus: there
is nothing year 6 teachers can do to change the secondary experience – all they
can do is change the year 6 children.
In my current role as primary deputy head in an all-through
school I have had the privilege of being able to go beyond that, though. I have
been able to work with my secondary-based colleagues to work on how we can make
our secondary provision more ready for children who are only 5 weeks older than
they were when they left primary school.
Starting back at the end of August, it is quite easy to
acknowledge, despite the best efforts of primary teachers (in over 30
feeder schools, in our case), that these year 6 children, having been used to the
primary experience for the entirety of their time in education, cannot be
completely ready for the huge sea change that is secondary school.
Sure, their teachers may have explained timetables, room changes, having their own equipment, typical sanctions, the fact that the
building is bigger, lunchtimes and all the increase in independence that is
required to tackle all these things, and they may have gone so far as to reflect some of these aspects in their own practice, but without experiencing these things day
in day out, inside a secondary school, primary children will not be fully secondary-ready.
They may be emotionally and mentally ready – and this is the
true work of the primary school in making children secondary-ready – but even
the most well-prepared, excited, practically-minded, optimistic, confident
11-year-old can be flummoxed by which room they’re in next, where that room
even is, who is teaching them, which equipment they need, and where on earth
the toilets are en route to their next lesson. They may have moved up with a
whole gang of their friends and feel super-secure in their relationships, but
throw a load of new children into the mix – including great hulking year 11s,
and that’s enough to throw anyone, even the most confident, friendly adult who
walks into a brand new social situation can struggle.
But it isn’t just primary schools who perpetuate the idea that
the only thing we can do to ensure a smooth transition to secondary is make
children secondary-ready. It is secondary schools too. And, I really do
hesitate to say this as it is very easy to point the finger from the other
side. As already mentioned, primary teachers can do very little to alter the
secondary experience for year 7 children, but secondary schools have all the
power to do so.
With a little thought, some willingness to change the status
quo, and probably some collaborative working between primary and secondary
staff, secondary schools could really make all the difference. No longer would
they have to rely on a plethora of primary teachers to make a whole cohort of
year 7 children secondary-ready. If year 7, and perhaps even beyond, was viewed
as a time to gradually immerse children (for they are still children) into the
ways of secondary school, then that initial culture shock of moving from
primary to secondary could be eradicated.
There are many ways this could take form, but there is a
general principle to be adhered to, one that many of us a familiar with with
regards to learning: reduce the
cognitive load.
Coming to secondary school for the first time is
overwhelming – overfacing as we say here in Yorkshire. It is a lot of newness.
If the number of new aspects of school life are reduced, and children are
allowed to focus on acclimatising to a limited number of changes, then they are
more likely to feel less overwhelmed and more capable of success in particular
aspects of school life.
Then, once certain aspects of school life have become more
automatic and embedded, additional changes can be slowly introduced over time
so as to build up to a full complement of the necessary aspects of secondary
school.
The question for schools is then: which aspects of secondary school life do we want to help acclimatise
year 7 children to first?
Each school will probably have a slightly different answer
to that question depending on their context, although there are probably common
answers: learning, routines for learning, relationships might be some of those
common answers.
At our academy we have decided that we want to build
relationships and ensure that learning is prioritised, and, as such our first
project was to develop a new KS3 curriculum which in some ways reflects the
style of curriculum year 7 and 8 children will have been used to at primary
school (I intend to blog about this in the future). We have also planned to
make lots of logistical changes which support these aims, which I’ve outlined in another blog post.
The changes that we have made, and plan to make, are
consistent with the above concept of reducing the cognitive load that comes
from making the leap into secondary school. It won’t be the case that the whole
of their secondary experience will be like that of their year 7 and 8
experience, but that things will change more gradually as they get older,
helping them to become secondary-ready over a longer period of time and
accepting that much of secondary-readiness can be developed once they are
actually at secondary school. Our approach accepts that year 7 doesn’t have to
be a mini-year 11, but that it can be just a few small steps on from year 6,
which in terms of child development, it is.
The point of this blog post is not to say this is how to do it, but to say that
things could be different, and that if they were, children might transition
into secondary school better and in the long term their secondary career could
be improved as a result of a more supportive formative experience.
I think I would go so far as to say that things should be
different, too: that transition should involve more than a project a few weeks
before and after the summer holidays; more than an open evening and a transition
day; more than some data being handed from one school to another. It will take
a lot of time and effort but if it means that year 7 children get a better
deal, and that it has a long-lasting effect on their time at secondary school,
I think it is worth it.
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