As a school we’ve been asked to undertake a major transition project with five of our main feeder primary schools and I’ve written this in response to a Twitter chat in the hope that it will be useful for colleagues who are looking at transition in their own schools. There are lots of questions here and hopefully things that will help you reflect. I’m not sure we got too many concrete answers yet, but I’ll share them when we do.
What about the emotional and social aspects that cause the dip? So far this has all been about the academic side of things, but I’m currently a Y8 form tutor and I’ve had my bunch since they started with us. We noticed some stark differences between primary and secondary that could contribute to the dip. Again, your context may differ, so apologies if this doesn’t apply. Also, this will all be obvious, but it is the cumulative effect of everything that means it has so much impact. We are, as I have stated a school with c.55% free school meals and this is rising year on year. We have a number of main feeder primaries, but we take pupils from nearly 30 schools across our area. We have a lot of disadvantaged pupils and deal with a lot of safeguarding issues. That is a huge melting pot for a Y7 pupil to immediately feel at ease in and start to be successful straight away. We’ve had conversations with primary colleagues during down time about ‘the old days’ where the vast majority of pupils from a primary went to the same secondary and there was relative continuity during this testing and in some cases traumatic time. Relationships and hierarchies were already established. The top dog was already known to most and more vulnerable pupils were already accepted and included. Anecdotally, it took less time for things and pupils to settle down. It also meant that secondary teachers had only a handful of different ‘styles’ to incorporate and get to grips with. I don’t know if it’s a ‘marketisation’ of schools, but competition and choice now means that there are a multitude of destinations for pupils after KS2. Primary colleagues were reporting that in an average class of 30, there were up to 10 different secondary destinations, all asking for different data, examples of work and summer projects. In a Y7 class of 30, it is normal for us to have upwards of 15 different primaries represented. While I think there is a general similarity of approach in KS2, there will undoubtedly be variation in classroom practice, expectations and approaches that we need to navigate, plug gaps and gauge proficiency in. And that’s just in English. Y7 pupils have to deal with an explosion of new subjects, some they’ll love, some they’ll hate, some they’ll do very well in, some they’ll flounder in. Some they already know they useless at from SATs results and will already feel negatively about. When we visited the primary schools we saw English or writing lessons that usually lasted between an hour and half and an hour and 45 minutes. This was great and the pupils were definitely making good, steady progress. But what we also saw were pupils that were already in their seats, had their equipment ready and were ready to learn. They had been with the same member of staff for the whole day and any minor issues, to do with uniform, lateness, equipment, illness and so on had already been dealt with. There were no interruptions. There wasn’t even a pause to take the register, it had already been done. Pencils, rulers and other resources were in the middle of the table already and all pupil’s stuff was at hand in their personal, private tray that they could leave, safe in the knowledge that no-one else was going to be in the room except them and their class. In my school, a lot can happen in the 2-5 minutes it takes a pupil to get from one side of the school site to another. By the time a pupil reaches my classroom, there can have been several external events that are going to negatively impact on my lesson. We expect pupils to self organise and they must bring and look after their own equipment, their exercise books, their reading book and their planner. And their PE kit. And their cooking ingredients. Some of my Y10 and Y11 pupils struggle to do this, yet we expect all Y7 pupils, no matter how small, how immature, how vulnerable and regardless of emotional intelligence to pick this up straight away. Our lessons are an hour long. By the time pupils arrive, a register is taken, equipment is unpacked, books or resources are given out, titles are written and instructions are delivered, we can be several minutes in already. When you add on packing up time, our hour lessons are more like 50 minutes and sometimes less than that. Even my best trained, best behaved, highly drilled class will get no more than 55 minutes and I think that’s optimistic. In the primary schools they were getting at least an hour and half every single day. In the morning. With no distractions and no movement between lessons. That’s 7 and half hours a week with no interruptions. We have Y7 four times a week for 50 minutes. Sometimes with a day gap. Sometimes after break and lunch. Sometimes after a lesson they don’t like. Sometimes with major distractions before arriving at the class. Sometimes without the right equipment or resources. That’s three hours and twenty minutes with built in disruptions. Over the course of Y7 this means that pupils get less time, with less continuity and with more emphasis on them to step up than they ever experienced at primary school. In July they’re the biggest and most mature in school, but they’re getting dropped off at the gate of a school that is just ‘round the corner for most. In September they’re right at the bottom of the pile, getting the bus across town on their own and having to navigate themselves around school. From the moment they walk through the door in September we are treating Y7 pupils exactly the same as we are treating Y11 pupils who have been with us for four years. Back to my form tutor experiences. I see my form for 15 minutes a day. Realistically after I’ve dealt with four or five key pupils, done a register, said our morning prayer, checked planners, given notices and sorted missing equipment, they’re out of the door again. I know them quite well. Actually, I know four or five pupils very well (but our relationship is very negative) and I know 25 pupils ‘a bit’. In my English classes, I know my KS4 pupils pretty well. I know my KS3 pupils reasonably well. In reality this means that I know what my KS4 pupils are like in my lesson: what they’re likely to say and do for 50 minutes, how much effort they’re likely to put in and whether I’ll probably need to intervene at some stage. I know whether they’re likely to need help, or whether I can leave them to get on with a task independently. I know them well enough to tell them a joke or two and I know who I can have a bit of ‘banter’ with. In reality my KS3 classes are like that as well, only less so. What was striking was that the primary colleagues we observed seem to know their pupils intimately. There was a huge amount of trust and honesty in the classroom relationships and there was a confidence in pupils of all abilities to ‘go for it’ in the lesson, be it answering out loud, reading to a group or sharing work. Pupils had been together in the same class and social group for nigh on 7 years. They had been with their teacher for up to 6 hours a day, every day for the best part of 5 months. Routines were established, relationships were positive, great things were possible. In short the pupils knew and trusted their teacher. They knew there was a consistent approach to everything. The teachers also clearly knew their pupils inside out and back to front. Across a full range of subjects and skills, both academically and emotionally. It’s a close relationship that I don’t know how we can replicate in our school. It’s also worth noting that colleagues in MfL, DT, Art and other subjects only see classes twice a week and on rotation. Building relationships is going to be even harder. And that’s just what goes in in the classroom. That’s just what we can control. I don’t know what behaviour is like at your school, or what aspirations are like or even what the social mix is, but there are huge influences, good and bad, during break, lunch and on the corridor between lessons. There are just more opportunities for disruption, anxiety and a lack of focus. In conclusion. What are our next steps? Well, that’s the big question. We have some ideas, but we need to think more and discuss more. A final thought on ‘the dip’. Is it realistic for there to be a smooth transition and a non-interrupted gradual improvement in writing between KS2 and KS3? Why is it assumed there will be? I don’t think that would be expected anywhere else. When you get a new job or a promotion isn’t it normal to have a dip in performance while you learn the ropes and bed in? Isn’t this what football teams do when they get promotion to the league above? When teams graduate to the Champions League? When people move from the countryside to the city? When animals are released into the wild, when… (pick your analogy and see if there’s a dip).
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As a school we’ve been asked to undertake a major transition project with five of our main feeder primary schools and I’ve written this in response to a Twitter chat in the hope that it will be useful for colleagues who are looking at transition in their own schools. There are lots of questions here and hopefully things that will help you reflect. I’m not sure we got too many concrete answers yet, but I’ll share them when we do.
‘The Dip’ is almost built in to the system. We’re tackling transition as part of an initiative to lessen the impact of the famous ‘dip’. As part of that we’ve explored what causes the dip. In my opinion there are many factors and these may differ depending on your context, but for us there a few main causes. For context, we have c. 55% Free school meals, low attendance and poor prior attainment, but perhaps these will help you reflect on the issues affecting transition where you are. We thought we had high expectations. We do. But we have realised how high the expectations are at primary school. I am gobsmacked at what is routinely expected of Year 6 pupils. Two things that really stood out. Most primaries have a list of non-negotiables. These do exactly what they say on the tin. If pupils have been taught a skill in depth, it becomes a non-negotiable – you will use it and you will get it right. When we have tried this with Year 7 and 8 pupils, they have ‘remembered’ these skills and have begun using them again with little input from us. This one strategy alone looks like it will have big impact. The general principle is to explicitly remind pupils what they have been taught and expect them to do it, and to do this all the time, embedding skills as you go along. What does your handwriting policy say about your school? This was a real eye-opener for us and something that primary colleagues noticed immediately. All primary pupils are expected to use cursive handwriting. I know this. It’s obvious. My son is in Year 4 and he’s currently striving hard to get his ‘pen licence’. It is a criteria for KS2 that immediately relegates any work that isn’t written in cursive. Yet, for us, looking at KS4 GCSE mark schemes it hasn’t ever been a consideration. Ever. Four of my department marked for AQA last summer and the message is loud and clear, if you can read it, you can mark it. Cursive wasn’t even on our radar. And yet, something that is regarded as critical at primary school, that is then dismissed entirely at secondary clearly signposts your expectations. If pupils can get away with not writing ‘properly’ and not making an effort with something so basic, what else can they get away with? If they’re not expecting me to write to the best of my ability, what else won’t they expect me to do to the best of my ability? Does good handwriting underpin the quality of good writing? Probably not. But like a smart uniform and a well turned out student body, it probably says something about the overall approach and relentless, dogged pursuit of high standards elsewhere. I still think we have high expectations, but maybe we need to align them with Year 5 and 6 expectations. Primary colleagues are amazing. This shouldn’t really need saying, but if, as a secondary English teacher you haven’t realised this, then you should. Whatever else comes out of this process, I have been privileged to observe primary colleagues who are incredibly skilful at what they do. I couldn’t have done what they did. And I think (I hope!) they were equally impressed when they saw what we were doing at our school too. However, when speaking to primary colleagues there’s an enormous amount of pressure placed on them. The results are down to one or two teachers in each school and there is significant scrutiny, monitoring and moderation. If nothing else, I think my department and the Year 6 teachers we have been working with have a new found respect for what we all do. Primary colleagues blew us out of the water when it came to grammar knowledge and technical skills. This was embarrassing and hard to hear. We realised we had failed to build on the successes of primary colleagues. We lined up Y7 writing next to Y6 writing and the primaries were scathing about both the work and the grades we had awarded. But when we reflected, we realised most of us in the department were Literature specialists and that specific Language and grammar was something we hadn’t studied in depth for years, even decades in some cases. In fact, some of us couldn’t really recall much grammar at our own secondary and wondered if this had changed between generations. Really, what we learned was that Primary colleagues and Secondary colleagues have very different skill sets and they teach very different things in very different ways. Our job now is to take on board what the primaries are doing and build on it in secondary, without losing sight of our requirements at KS4. Which in turn prompted this question… How do we morph KS2 requirements into KS4 requirements? We started this by looking at the requirements of KS2 and comparing them to the requirements of KS4. We’re concentrating on writing at the moment, so in practice we looked at the KS2 mark scheme and the KS4 AQA Mark scheme. The KS2 mark scheme is really quite specific and prescriptive. The KS4 mark scheme is really quite woolly and open to interpretation. They don’t really seem to join anywhere in the middle. That’s wrong. They do, but you now have to fill in the gap yourself. Life after levels could, cynically be referred to as life without KS3, where you have to decide yourself what to do and how to do it until KS4. In our case I think we defaulted into making KS3 an ever-so-slightly differentiated version of KS4. In our heads we thought we were throwing pupils in at the deep end, but actually we were throwing many of them under a bus. Really tough, really hard, really challenging doesn’t necessarily equate to high expectations. Certainly not appropriate expectations. We are going to go away and look at what are doing at KS3 and whether it builds on what pupils can already do at KS2, whether it helps them prepare for KS4 and, importantly, whether or not it is fun and interesting. In essence we are going to try and re-introduce a proper, distinct KS3 that builds on previous skills, prepare for the next phase but is its own distinct entity. And I do think it’s important that there is a definite key change at the start of KS4, whenever that may begin for you. The psychological ‘step-up’ is important. You also need to know what they can already do at KS2. Not guess at it, or make assumptions, but go and have a look. Have a proper conversation with your Y6 teachers and look at their work. Some key questions we are asking:
We need to adjust and build on KS2 skills, but we can’t ignore our own needs. We also can’t be too negative – we are doing a lot of good things and actually, our schemes of work and our teaching are good. We can’t throw away a lot of hard work and good practice because we have seen something very good at primary. We need to identify what is good, what will work for us and what we can pinch. What are primaries doing different to us? A lot. There are social and emotional things that primary teachers do that are hard to recreate at secondary – more of that later- but from a writing perspective there are big differences in approach. As part of the process we are agreeing a joint approach to teaching writing to KS2 and KS3 pupils and will be undertaking some team teaching to implement this. As I said earlier, part of our process was to align expectations and we did this by moderating work. We looked at each other’s books and feedback. We undertook the same writing task, marked it and then compared our marks. This was a car crash for us. We have a KS3 mark scheme that mirrors GCSE grades from 1-9 and we are confident, with our four GCSE markers, that we know what each grade looks like. However, the primary colleagues trashed our judgements, during an excoriating and illuminating afternoon session. They literally couldn’t believe what we were awarding. We felt very bruised and battered after their feedback. But again, we went back to our CPD on the examiner’s feedback from the summer and on reflection we had confidence in our grades. What it highlighted though, was the difference in expectations for each key stage. What was rewarded at KS2 was significantly, if not 100%, different from KS4 and these differences, while perhaps small, threw up massively different results in many cases. We are so tuned in to GCSE criteria that we haven’t bothered to teach or insist on pupils using skills that are essential for higher grades at KS2. These small anomalies threw up massive differences in attainment, but also apparent massive differences of emphasis in the classroom. These differences of approach need to be more aligned and will be the focus of our ongoing work with primary colleagues. The hope is that we will both improve our practice and ultimately improve our pupils’ writing skills. So what did we see in the primary classroom? We saw big differences. I’m in danger of massively generalising, but in essence the primary approach is to carefully scaffold, constantly remind and relentlessly practice writing skills. This took place over a week or two weeks, with on average an hour and half lesson a day. Once a piece of writing was ready it was written up ‘in best’. This seems at any rate to be the model we have observed. The work we saw in writing books was uniformly excellent, with handwriting and presentation of a universally excellent standard. We had to question how independent the writing was. Was it all a true reflection of a pupil’s ability to write? Was it done under ‘exam conditions’ and so on. In contrast, our approach essentially mirrored our GCSE task taking. Over the space of six weeks, with three to four one hour lessons a week, pupils would re-visit key skills, looking at features of the specific genre and format. In that time they would write between one and three practice pieces with a short amount of practice, sometimes focusing on beginnings, endings, a specific skill and so forth. At the end of the scheme pupils were given a new, similar style question, expected to plan, write and check a piece of writing in 45 minutes. Independently and under exam conditions. Pupils are on their own. Sink or swim. In at the deep end. Under that bus. We had to question how scaffolded the writing was. Was it a true reflection of a pupil’s ability to write? Should it be done under exam conditions and so on. We were ashamed of our pupils’ work when we compared it to what we saw primary colleagues bringing to the table. When we looked back, both examples of work reflected what they were. Primary writing books are the end product of a series of lessons working on one piece. They are excellent and showcase what a pupil can do with the right support and good teaching. Our writing was in books that included everything else we did in class, were the product of 45 minutes of totally independent work under pressure, off the back of a couple of week’s work. Of course they were different. Were ours worse or did they just look worse? We thought the primary teachers were giving too much support, they thought we weren’t giving enough. We’re finding a middle ground approach that everyone benefits from. At this point it is important to say that opinion was divided about where the writing went from here. There was also some muted and limited conversation about what gets included in the final grade for pupils and what counts towards their KS2 score and there was some understandable reluctance to elaborate here. There were also an awkward few moments when we asked how much writing happened in the lead up to SATS and what happened between SATS and summer. But again, primary colleagues are under enormous pressure. Before you judge, put yourself in their shoes. |
Mr W
Head of English in a northern school. ArchivesCategories |