Recently there has been much discussion about transition. The 0-11 nasen Advisory Group have produced three written pieces on the role of good transition as part of our recent activity and we have decided to share these.

Two were written in ‘normal circumstances’ and one was written post COVID19 lockdown. We have not edited them. We have published them as they have been presented to nasen connect.

1. School B Ready
2. Primary to Secondary
3. Returning from a significant absence

The 0-11 nasen advisory group, chaired by Michelle Prosser Haywood have been discussing the merits of an excellent transition programme for learners with SEND. Here they outline some considerations for learners transiting from Early Years to School Settings.  

It is without doubt that we are all aware of the change model and the impact it can have not just on our lives but also the lives of the learners we teach. It was Williams (1991) who proposed that we should accept change, as it happens to all learners, but we should also reconsider it as managing transition. In education there is perhaps no more important transition than managing change for young children going from the familiar to the unfamiliar, such as; from nursery to reception, or reception to year one, or key stage to key stage or transition to high school.

Some learners can cope well with transition, and this can simply be visiting and meeting their new teachers, but for learners with SEND, a move between settings can create uncertainty and anxiety, which we can try and avoid through careful and thorough planning.  Galton, Gray & Ruddock (1999) suggest that there are five learning bridges to good and effective transition; administrative, social & personal, curriculum, pedagogy and autonomy and managing learning and in the first of the transition series by the 0-11 nasen advisory group, these areas have been explored to support Early Years transition from an Early Years Setting (PVI or School run setting) to a School Setting for a learner with SEND

Administrative

The timeline is tight – Move fast!

Allocated school places for F2 are communicated to the school and parents in April, before the learner is due to start in September. Four to five months can sound like a long time but time soon slips away with the other demands a SENCO faces in school and in reality, everything needs to be in place by mid-July. If a learner has been allocated a place at your school then you have a duty to be ready.

Remember the other professionals in the Team around the Child are there to help you. If you had an idea that a learner with identified SEND is likely to be coming to your school you may already have pencilled in a pre-transition date. If not you will have to move quickly to pull together a pre-transition meeting and finding a mutually convenient time should not be underestimated as a task. Remember to ask the parents about who they would like at the meeting but also consider who from the receiving school should attend. It may for example, also be helpful to have a paediatrician at the meeting to explain the implications of a complex medical condition but the specialist ASD SALT may be the most useful person for the learner with complex autism and the paediatrician may not be needed.

Leaflets and pre joining information 

Any leaflets and guidance about a child being ‘school ready’ or ‘key stage ready’ must be considered with great caution when a learner has SEND. Apart from causing undue stress and worry to parents, who can then believe they should seek to delay the transition, whilst their child ‘catches up to be ready’ it could be wholly inappropriate, for example common statements in early years might be your child must / should; be able to ‘count to 10’ when the learner is pre-verbal, be toilet trained when the learner is incontinent and be able to write their name when the learner has cerebral palsy and may never be able to hold a pencil.

Local Authority Support (and any additional funding) 

Different agencies and Local Authorities will have different funding streams and negotiating these (if applicable) can be complex. For example does health contribute towards the care of a learner in school who has a tracheostomy?  Arrangements may vary across health authorities. These arrangements will need to be have been finalised before the learner enters the new setting.

Social & Personal

One size does not fit all

Pre-transition activities that worked well last year for a learner with SEND may not be right another for each learner. The best transitions for learners with SEND are bespoke and personalised.

The ‘Empty/extra’ visit can help with familiarity. A child will visit the classroom when it is empty so that they can look around without the hustle and bustle of 30 other children in the space. This can be very useful for children with sensory needs and those to whom a familiar environment is particularly important. Parents can also be encouraged to take photos on their phone of key areas in the room – the toilets, where the child will hang their coat, put their water bottle, sit on the carpet etc.

A parent can then show their child the photos during the long summer holidays to remind them of their new environment. The benefit of an empty visit is that there are less GDPR issues as there are no children in the room. For some learners, as well, the most important photos will be of the new adults, rather than the environment and schools should endeavour to provide photographs of the key people.

Some learners will benefit enormously from extra visits – the more time they spend in the new room with the new adults the better. For others it may be a very unsettling experience as they are now not sure where they belong – their existing setting or the new school? Be guided by parents/carers here and other adults who know the child well.

Uniform 

This may be the first time a child has to wear a uniform. Any sensory needs that require reasonable adjustments should be addressed before the learner joins the school. Preparation could, for example, involve the child wearing their uniform on their pre visits.

If a child is still in nappies some school trousers do not fit and some do not support independence when a child is learning to use the toilet independently. Trousers that can be washed and tumble dried make life easier for parents.

School Lunch 

It could be the first time that a child has had a lunch outside of their home. The school healthy eating policy may not fit with the limited foods that some children can or will eat. Consider before the child starts school, how this is going to be managed.

School Behaviour Policies 

Careful consideration should be given to school behaviour policies and what impact these could have and this information could be collected during pre-observation. Information as how the learner responds to praise, what are potential triggers and how does the learner like to be comforted could be useful starting points.

Curriculum

The SENCO will need to informally observe the learner on several occasions, in their current setting, prior to their start date, to gain as much information as they can about their current levels of learning, how they access activities and what their interests are.

Pedagogy

Most young learners do not have a good understanding of the passage of time and so telling them that they will be going to school after the holidays or in 6 weeks’ time will not reassure them or be meaningful to them. Guide parents with this by offering them a simple calendar with symbols to use during July and August and early September. This may help to give some structure to the summer holidays for the child and the start of school will flow naturally from this. It will also help to make life feel more predictable for the learner.

Autonomy & Managing Learning

No matter what the size of the Team around the Child and the meeting there are some underlying aims that are the same; parents should leave the meeting reassured, and with a clear idea of what the plan is and feel that their voice has been heard and that they have been listened to. We are asking parents to take a leap of faith with professionals, some of whom they barely know and entrust them with their child and we want this relationship to get off to a good start.

At the meeting the school staff need to glean as much information as possible about the child. This includes what the child is like both in their existing setting and at home and we would expect there to be differences between the two. There is no substitution for a robust Action Plan which anticipates the learner’s needs and is able to detail reasonable adjustments to ensure curriculum entitlement is met as well as acting as a reassurance for the parents.

The Bridge of Transition – Primary to Secondary

Following on from their last article on transition for EY pupils with SEND, the 0-11 nasen advisory group, chaired by Michelle Prosser Haywood, have put together a subsequent piece on children with SEND transitioning from Primary to Secondary School. They have again used the five learning bridges which they explained and used previously.

Transition involves adjusting to new surroundings, and throughout primary, if the child has stayed in the same school, they will have been involved in transition. But this will have been within a familiar primary setting, where they know the teachers and support staff, and are comfortable and confident within their current school environment. Children will know where their next class will be and they may have visited or been in other classrooms for various reasons prior to being regularly based there. Each new academic year, although children may not yet know their new teacher, they will often stay with the same class of children and so there will be some level of familiarity for them.

In comparison, the transition to secondary school, will involve making sense of new rules on a larger scale, adapting to a new uniform, becoming familiar with different groups of people, including peers from a range of different primary schools and also a range of subject teachers, a form tutor and numerous other members of staff.

Alongside this, children will also have to become familiar with the school layout so that they can find subject rooms, navigate around the building (often more than one) and learn to use a timetable (sometimes one that is over two weeks). They will have to adjust to not knowing where they stand in the new ‘pecking order’, or how they compare against their new classmates.

Again we recognise that some children can cope well with transition, and by visiting and meeting their new teachers they feel assured, but for children with SEND, a move between settings can create uncertainty and increase anxiety, which we can try to avoid through careful and thorough planning.

The five learning bridges (Galton, Gray & Ruddock 1999); administrative, social & personal, curriculum, pedagogy and autonomy and managing learning, which we used to structure the transition from Nursery to Reception, in our previous piece for Nasen Connect are equally valid to support the transition from Primary to secondary school and we have focused on them again here.

Administrative

Allocated places for secondary schools are formalised by most LAs around February, usually by similar dates each year. The transition for a learner with an Educational, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) will start earlier at the Year 5 Annual Review, when the LA will have an indication of the wishes of the parent/carer and learner. This Annual Review is really important as a time to start setting out the plans for a successful transition. Where decisions have been made about school placement, it is helpful for the SENCO from the secondary school to be involved in the annual review, enabling children and families to start developing communication and  positive relationships with key staff early on.

Pupils at SEND Support won’t have an annual review, but parents & carers can still be asked their wishes, in year 5. The choice may well be the local feeder school and additional arrangements to the standard transition package could be put in place, which ensures that children accessing SEND Support are given a longer transition period to support their individual needs. This might include extra visits for the child to the secondary school.

Social & Personal

Transition activities should involve visits to the secondary school for a range of different activities, such as the school play and sporting events. We mentioned the ‘Empty/Extra’ visit in our previous piece. There is no reason why the same strategy cannot be used at this stage too. These strategies will start to help a child to feel a sense of belonging, and if they take place with peers who intend to also attend the same secondary school, they can start to make connections to this new group.

Children may want to take photographs to help them remember and think about their new school.  Providing a colour coded map of the school layout may also help students to identify subject rooms and other areas such as the cafeteria or form rooms.

Children will want to feel emotionally and physically safe. The common places which pupils cite as being less safe are open spaces during less structured time such as break and lunch times. Transition packages can focus on these times in regards to the School behaviour Policy, and also on alternatives. If, for example, the school runs lunchtime clubs, then children should attend these as part of the transition package.  During transition the school should be clear on its homework policy and expectations.

Pedagogy, Autonomy & Managing Learning

Transition can be considered effective when the school has an understanding of their pupils and they have created an environment where they can make progress, and the transition package should continue beyond the first few days of entry to the new school. Not all pupils will have the resourcefulness or resilience to adapt quickly to their new school. Issues may also crop up which haven’t been anticipated, such as sensory overload in the corridors which prompts a pupil to wait until the corridors are empty, or draw on a coping strategy which draws attention to him/her. These should be identified immediately and consideration given to them.

Overall remember that children with EHCPs and at SEND Support may have parallel planning in place which can be tricky for transition and needs to be handled sensitively and carefully. There is a fine balance between the preparation for transition and the child still feeling part of the current learning environment, and community.

Transition after a significant Absence

Following on from their pieces on transition for EY pupils with SEND, and from primary to secondary, the 0-11 nasen advisory group, chaired by Michelle Prosser Haywood, have put together a subsequent piece on considerations for all children who could be transitioning back to school after a significant absence.

No one expected the country to go into a lockdown on the 23^rd March as a result of a global pandemic, and over the few weeks that followed to the Easter holidays, Schools and families had to adjust to new circumstances. Many children stayed at home with their parents, whilst other children, with parents who were keyworkers or where considered vulnerable continued to attend school, but with considerable changes made to allow for social distancing. This was the biggest change to our ‘normal ways of living and working’ that any of us have ever had to deal with, but an even bigger challenge to could be returning to a ‘normal’ school routine.

Each year, transition and change is managed across schools, from year group to year group; it is part of school life. For what we may consider more significant transition, such as from an early years setting to reception or from year 6 to year 7, we arrange more transition activities than when learners are moving from one class to another in the same school. In the past, the majority of children coped well with this; visiting and meeting their new teachers and settling quickly into new routines when they arrive in new classroom or setting.

Additional work around transition tended to focus on vulnerable children and learners with SEND. Following the current lockdown, all children may not have the same ‘bounce back ability’ and resilience they  have demonstrated in the past. Its likely all children will need ‘additional and different’ support depending on their individual experiences during the lockdown.

Every school has responded differently to the learning resources they have provided, during the lockdown, and some of these will have evolved, making use of free resources as they become available (i.e. Oak National Academy and BBC Bitesize) and including celebrity activity, such as PE with Joe Wickes and Storytime with David Walliams. Others have provided daily challenge; the #ChatleyChallenge for example has been setting a range of activities, with films of teachers taking part;  say the alphabet backwards, obstacle courses, blindfold activity and the #keepdancingchallenge which featured on the One Show.

Younger children particularly will not have been able to engage in the same way as older mature children who will be able to follow online lessons. Over the weeks of the lockdown, it is likely therefore that children’s engagement with any school work could have varied, from day to day, and week to week, depending on home circumstances. Some parents will have been working whilst trying to support their children’s learning, other families may not have had access to the technology to run online learning sessions  or have a space to set up as a ‘classroom’ whilst others have kept some form of routine and continued to attend school although in smaller groups and not always with the same teacher each day or each week. Each child’s experience, therefore, during this time will be different and when our children are able to return to normal schooling, we need to be aware of these experiences and plan accordingly.

While our children are absent, we need to continue to maintain regular contact with them, and this can be through a number of ways, which have successfully demonstrated by schools across social media; regular quizzes, webchats, marking work if it has been set, dedicated youtube channels and using Tik Tok!

It is important to remind children what their school looks like, so running virtual tours and using parts of the school for activities, such as one of the classrooms for a story setting, or a ‘live’ treasure hunt around the school with the teachers and children who are in the building, will help to keep the school building familiar to them for when they return.

No decisions have been made when and how children may return, so a range of staggered starts may be employed, however there will be those children who are transitioning to another key stage, in another school or setting who did not get the chance to stay goodbye, and have not had the opportunity to visit their new setting. There is no reason why similar activities cannot be planned, with the intent that pupils, especially ones transitioning from year 6 to 7, might want to go back to their previous schools and this could even be part of a staggered start for this group of children.

On return, we will need to be re build our school communities. Staggered starts will give schools to the opportunity to rebuild with their children. Many children will  experience separation anxiety, at the very least, and will need to adjust to being around big groups of children again, as well as coping with loss and change. The schools the children will be returning to, will not be the schools they left, some staff may no longer be there, and they themselves will have changed during the time they have been absent.

We will need to provide safe spaces, so that children can talk about their experiences during the lockdown and there will be some children and schools who will have lost friends and colleagues. We need to understand bereavement and trauma ourselves and we must prepare so that we can support our children.

We must understand that children will have had different experiences during the lockdown, and not return to a formal assessments and formal schooling, some children will have made progress, others will not and we will have to make changes to our curriculum and the types of lessons we deliver.

We must understand that re-establishing routines may take longer than we expect. Everyone will be re learning the rhythms of the everyday; getting up at the same time, leaving the house at the same time and accommodating other family members in these routines.

And finally we must remember that post lockdown, things will have changed for everyone and we must take our time to adapt to this, for ourselves and the children we teach.

The Impact of School Transitions and Transfers on Pupil Progress and Attainment

Galton, Gray and Ruddock, Homerton College Cambridge 1999 – DCSF Research Report No 131

http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RR131.doc

 

 

 

 

 

 

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