Year 7 parents have been very positive about our transition work as children make the step up from primary to secondary school.

Naturally, this is a big step up and our regular sessions with primary schools, our Transition Days, our SENCO and Head of House visits to primary schools, and drop-ins by Lottie Hearn (Assistant Headteacher) and Matt Allman (Headteacher) all seek to ease the switch.

Equally, we work to get the students involved through welcome postcards, postcards back to primaries, and Year 7 guides on Open Evening.

The recent feedback shows that we cannot please all of the people all of the time, but we are getting it right most of the time:

 

TRANSITION FROM PRIMARY TO SECONDARY SCHOOL QUESTIONNAIRE

Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree Don’t Know
Communication with the school before transition – including Parents’ Evening in June were effective 44 22 2 0 2
Communication with the school since starting The Friary has been effective 27 41 3 0 0
My child has settled in well to secondary school 48 19 2 1 0
My child is given suitable opportunities to take part in extra-curricular activities 34 27 2 0 7
My child has adapted well to the Home Learning Schedule 28 39 3 0 0

We would encourage all parents to subscribe to our Twitter feed and drop in on our website as they are big sources of information; for example, we have a termly updated extra-curricular schedule under the Student tab. We do send letters and texts out, but there is so much going on we simply do not have the resources to do it for every item.

Lottie Hearn, Assistant Headteacher, said: “We put all of our efforts into making transition run as smoothly as possible as we know a good start often sets things up for the long-term. All children respond differently, some flourish, a small group struggle, but we endeavour to catch every child that stumbles, stop them actually falling, and help them on their way. We are already looking forward to September 2018.”