Back in the day when teachers had more time, we (secondary teachers) would visit students in their grade 6 setting to get to know them and talk about next year. Secondary schools continue to hold orientation days for grade 6 students.
As a year 6 teacher for many years, I feel there was often good transition in terms of preparation: including meetings with receiving school to discuss individual pupils, sharing of support plans; additional visits to the high school prior to the official transition days. However, you are right that what was missing was often any indication of whether this was successful. They left us and, apart from what might be heard indirectly from siblings, parents or the occasional student that pops back to see their old school, that was it. I am also aware of many SEND pupils who were able to cope, access school and make progress in primary settings, but who struggled and often became persistent absentees or even excluded in the secondary environment.
In Norfolk, there is no specific role like you describe for co-ordinating transition for SEND pupils. For those who have additional services involved, such as the Inclusion Team or Social Workers, there is someone responsible for checking appropriate support continues but it is not in place for all SEND. It often feels to me like pupils have to fail before they will get help, rather than anticipating potential difficulties and putting preventative strategies in place before this occurs.
I think there is also a wider question around the jump from primary to secondary and the lack of continuity in general. A few years back we had a wonderful project where secondary colleagues were invited to join in with year 6 teachers moderating writing. Sadly few came but those that did were shocked at the end of key stage 2 expectations. The more we talked, the more we realise that this applied to Maths and other subjects too. Comments like "we don't expect them to do any of this in year 7" and "we teach that all over again in year 10" stuck with me. I was working so hard to get the children where they 'needed to be' but none of it was being built on. We think we're doing a good job but without feedback from the next stage. how do we really know if it's the right things we are focussing on? Yes, I know some of this is linked to SATS and the pressure for results, but I still think more of a co-ordinated approach between primary and secondary could benefit both sides.
Oh my word, you’ve struck such an important point there - and I think general continuity isn’t right at all. Joined handwriting plays such an important part in Year 6 writing moderation but gets dropped thereafter; I recently did a survey where I couldn’t tell the difference between SATs and GCSE arithmetic questions; writing content utterly transforms from varied formats to essay after essay after essay… what a can of worms 😂 thank you so much for your insights here.
In my opinion, this is definitely a role that's needed! My LA doesn't have this but the Area Inclusion Partnership does. This is a paid service from a select cluster of schools and doesn't focus on SEND pupils, so there are loads of SEND pupils not getting this level of support.
To have one (or several) person employed by the LA to specifically support SEND learners from Y6 to Y7, just makes sense to me. I'd imagine you'd seen attendance improve dramatically after the first year.
Very interesting - one of my big considerations is ‘who would pay for a role like this?’ School budgets are stretched, councils are restructuring and many downsizing roles… but we’ll see whether I can establish any need.
I'm not sure about the LA having a person - we are quite a large LA so there would potentially need to be several in order to be effective. However, one of our local secondaries had someone who would come out and speak with all of the children, but would particularly support those with SEND from the end of Y5, throughout Y6 and then into Y7. We had good links with the school so there was some feedback. I don't really know whether this is still in place.
What did strike me is that this may potentially one of benefits of the academy system. Most trusts have a secondary school attached so presumably, budget dependent, it would be something that would be relatively easy to put in place.
Definitely worthwhile though. Our primaries are so small that everyone knows everyone and then suddenly the children are stuck in a huge school where they see staff for an hour or two each week at most. It's like going from a village to a city. I struggled with it and that was around 30 years ago and it really doesn't feel like there's been a lot of progress since.
Great shout mentioning academies - I work in one and we are a kind of ‘feeder school’ to one secondary in particular, and also send a lot of students to a couple of others with a few isolated individuals going elsewhere. But we’re not part of a trust, and so we don’t have someone within a group of primary schools working to this end. That’s a way of doing it that would be worth exploring.
But then - what about the more isolated primary schools, like you say? They’re - yet again - left behind while academies have an easier model for these transitions.
You’ve given me some things to really think about!
Back in the day when teachers had more time, we (secondary teachers) would visit students in their grade 6 setting to get to know them and talk about next year. Secondary schools continue to hold orientation days for grade 6 students.
As a year 6 teacher for many years, I feel there was often good transition in terms of preparation: including meetings with receiving school to discuss individual pupils, sharing of support plans; additional visits to the high school prior to the official transition days. However, you are right that what was missing was often any indication of whether this was successful. They left us and, apart from what might be heard indirectly from siblings, parents or the occasional student that pops back to see their old school, that was it. I am also aware of many SEND pupils who were able to cope, access school and make progress in primary settings, but who struggled and often became persistent absentees or even excluded in the secondary environment.
In Norfolk, there is no specific role like you describe for co-ordinating transition for SEND pupils. For those who have additional services involved, such as the Inclusion Team or Social Workers, there is someone responsible for checking appropriate support continues but it is not in place for all SEND. It often feels to me like pupils have to fail before they will get help, rather than anticipating potential difficulties and putting preventative strategies in place before this occurs.
I think there is also a wider question around the jump from primary to secondary and the lack of continuity in general. A few years back we had a wonderful project where secondary colleagues were invited to join in with year 6 teachers moderating writing. Sadly few came but those that did were shocked at the end of key stage 2 expectations. The more we talked, the more we realise that this applied to Maths and other subjects too. Comments like "we don't expect them to do any of this in year 7" and "we teach that all over again in year 10" stuck with me. I was working so hard to get the children where they 'needed to be' but none of it was being built on. We think we're doing a good job but without feedback from the next stage. how do we really know if it's the right things we are focussing on? Yes, I know some of this is linked to SATS and the pressure for results, but I still think more of a co-ordinated approach between primary and secondary could benefit both sides.
Oh my word, you’ve struck such an important point there - and I think general continuity isn’t right at all. Joined handwriting plays such an important part in Year 6 writing moderation but gets dropped thereafter; I recently did a survey where I couldn’t tell the difference between SATs and GCSE arithmetic questions; writing content utterly transforms from varied formats to essay after essay after essay… what a can of worms 😂 thank you so much for your insights here.
In my opinion, this is definitely a role that's needed! My LA doesn't have this but the Area Inclusion Partnership does. This is a paid service from a select cluster of schools and doesn't focus on SEND pupils, so there are loads of SEND pupils not getting this level of support.
To have one (or several) person employed by the LA to specifically support SEND learners from Y6 to Y7, just makes sense to me. I'd imagine you'd seen attendance improve dramatically after the first year.
Very interesting - one of my big considerations is ‘who would pay for a role like this?’ School budgets are stretched, councils are restructuring and many downsizing roles… but we’ll see whether I can establish any need.
I'm not sure about the LA having a person - we are quite a large LA so there would potentially need to be several in order to be effective. However, one of our local secondaries had someone who would come out and speak with all of the children, but would particularly support those with SEND from the end of Y5, throughout Y6 and then into Y7. We had good links with the school so there was some feedback. I don't really know whether this is still in place.
What did strike me is that this may potentially one of benefits of the academy system. Most trusts have a secondary school attached so presumably, budget dependent, it would be something that would be relatively easy to put in place.
Definitely worthwhile though. Our primaries are so small that everyone knows everyone and then suddenly the children are stuck in a huge school where they see staff for an hour or two each week at most. It's like going from a village to a city. I struggled with it and that was around 30 years ago and it really doesn't feel like there's been a lot of progress since.
Great shout mentioning academies - I work in one and we are a kind of ‘feeder school’ to one secondary in particular, and also send a lot of students to a couple of others with a few isolated individuals going elsewhere. But we’re not part of a trust, and so we don’t have someone within a group of primary schools working to this end. That’s a way of doing it that would be worth exploring.
But then - what about the more isolated primary schools, like you say? They’re - yet again - left behind while academies have an easier model for these transitions.
You’ve given me some things to really think about!