NPFS online discussion: Day 3 – Transitions
Welcome to day 3 of the National Parent Forum of Scotland’s online discussion. Today’s question is about transitions in the early years.
Day 3: 3 October
Over recent years there has been a great focus on transitions from pre-school/nursery to primary one. What do you think works well and what could we be doing better? Getting It Right for Every child (GIRFEC) and The Early Years Framework recognise the importance of staff working together to share information and ideas to help our young people. What are your experiences of this?
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Related:
#NPFS12 – Discussion: Day 1 – Parental Engagement.
#NPFS12 – Discussion: Day 2 – Curriculum for Excellence
#NPFS12 – Discussion: Day 4 – Additional Support for Learning.
#NPFS12 – Discussion: Day 5 – ICT.
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A quick guide to Curriculum for Excellence
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Communication is the key. The correct information must be passed along and shared at the correct time. I am not convinced that the P7 profiles this year added anything to the information being passed to High Schools. it will be interesting to see how the secondary schools approach and use the information for the s3 profiles. Is there any point to them for those S3s who have already selected their National subjects?
There does seem a determined effort amongst Local Authorities to improve transitions at every stage but there is considerable room, still, for improvement.
Too often we here that children with ASN "get lost" for a few months in theiir move to secondary before their needs are dealt with – and then usually following a "reassesment" by the High School. Why do they not trust their Primary Collegues in their assesments?
Perhaps this is an area where ICT can help: the next version of Glow can/should facilitate an ongoing 'learner journey', where a child begins the process in early years, along with an introductory e-portfolio of their drawings, first steps at writing, images of pottery and other tangible creations. Their Glowplus identity and e-portfolio can be transferred to primary, where it would be augmented and enhanced over the years, and transition to secondary.
If the pupil continues into further/higher education then they could take their e-portfolio and possibly their online identity and aspects of their e-portfolio into college or university. I would expect some of their work would already be publicly available, especially in the secondary phase.
Every year we strive to improve our transition programme between pre5 and P1 as parents, carers and children seem to benefit from it. In June of this year we added a tour of the school and grounds for incoming children and their families. This proved a very worthwhile experience and many positive comments were received from all involved.
I think that despite the pre-school visits and tours, the culture change and regimen of the school system can still be something of a shock to young children. The nursery environment has more emphasis on care and nurture and the move to a more systematic and disciplined education environment is jarring for many children.
Perhaps the children would benefit from a short period of attendance at primary school (not just a visit – maybe three days of *being* a school pupil) before their summer break, just as many P7 to S1 children currently enjoy. Starting school after a long break from nursery might not seem such a huge step to them if they know what to expect.
As a mum of a child who moved from pre-school to P1 at the start of this term, I cannot praise our school highly enough for the process. The children had several bump up days before the summer break and spent time in the infants area. My son has settled well, and is enjoying the whole experience. His teacher knew exactly who he was on the first day and knew all the children in the class as far as I could see.
There were very few tears in the playground on those first few days and most children run in enthusiastically to school
We encourage parents to bring their child with them for registration . The children play in one of our classrooms with our nursery nurse and a classroom assistant while the parents fill in the paperwork and chat to one another over tea and coffee.
We have ongoing visits from our nearby nurseries where the children join our P1 class for some activities during the pre school year.Our induction programme runs for 4 weeks(one afternoon a week) with the children working on a range of activities in the classroom and the parents meeting to discuss various aspects of the life and work of our school with the management team and other agencies who work closely with us.
Nursery staff work alongside the P1 teacher during the first week to help the children settle . It seems to work well and feedback from parents is very positive.
The transition from nursery school to primary school was definitely helped by attending the nursery school which was located within the primary school. This was hen helped by the nursery children being involved in school activities – including school assemblies and the nativity show.
When transition is done right then it provides a springboard for your child to learn and develop and reassures parents. As a parent who has seen pre school to primary transition and primary to secondary transition you can see that a great deal of time and effort goes into making sure that full information about the child, their interests and their learning is shared and used to inform their future learning. It is crucially important step in a young persons learning and my experiences is that it is working well.
We arranged a Playground Pals Party for nursery and P1 pupils in June. This helped to establish friendships between children who would be playing together in the playground next year and since a P2/1 class was to be created, may even be in the same class. Groups of pre-school children visited P1 with keyworkers at arranged times and worked with P1 children, becoming familiar with the setting and the teacher.
The trick is not so much what is 'offered' for transition but that the welcome to parents and children is warm, deeply embedded and continues throughout a child's education, each and every day. We parents trust nurseries and schools with our children, and that trust needs regular nurturing and reassurance, simply because we parents are always in transition, as our children change and grow minute by minute and day by day. A parent wobble can happen at any time for any reason – we look to the experts to support us on our parenting journey! Teachers and nursery/school staff have the context of their experience of many different children to give them perspective and confidence – we parents don't! We are experts on our own children but not on anything else child-related…
Our Primary 6 buddies went out to the local nurseries to meet the new Primary 1 children who were coming into the school. They read them stories and played games with them. This meant the nursery children who were not in the school nursery were introduced to their buddies in a safe and familiar environment. A fabulous experience that both sets of children thoroughly enjoyed.
Our Primary school also invite the nursery children to come along to assemblies all year long and so the children become familiar with the older children, the staff and the school layout.
Transition from nursery to primary requires good communication between nursery staff and primary staff, children and their parents/carers. Nursery children should have opportunities to experience working alongside children in primary at the early level within curriculum for excellence in primary and nursery setting. All staff involved need to collect information from children and their parents/carers about the learning to ensure that this information Is shared with the receiving primary. This close working ensures that children's transitions from nursery to primary are positive and children know what to expect when they start school.
My son started Secondary at Donaldsons this year and from January onwards he was one class a day in Secondary and in all week on his last day of "Primary" term. He got a full picture timetable for this term home with him at the end of last term, along with a booklet giving pictures of all the staff he'll be involved with and their subjects.
Planning, execution and partnership (within School and with us) has made for a seamless and happy move – he spent most of the summer choking to get back at it and would go along the timetable tapping the pictures, saying "yes" and signing "mine".