Laura Thomson produces two boxes of small, brightly coloured cubes and places them in front of the four P7 pupils she’s working with. Sometimes, when primary pupils are asked to work with cubes in maths, their response is an indignant declaration of “But I’m not in the bottom group!”

To pre-empt this, Thomson tells them that this morning, at the secondary school, S5 pupils preparing for their exams were using cubes in their maths lessons. The jaws of the P7s drop a little and their eyes widen; this is clearly something of a revelation. They are right to be taken aback: the use of so-called “concrete materials” - from cubes and counters to number lines and “algebra rods” - is a relatively recent phenomenon in Renfrew High School’s maths department, and one that can be traced back to Thomson’s arrival at the school.

Thomson is a primary teacher but, since August 2017, she has been employed by Renfrewshire Council as a “transition teacher”. From January to June, she works across the three primary schools that feed into Renfrew High - Arkleston Primary, Kirklandneuk Primary and Newmains Primary - getting to know the P7 pupils and where they are in their learning. Then, when the pupils leave primary for secondary in August, she goes with them and team-teaches the new S1s, mainly with maths and English teachers but also in social subjects and science.

Thomson - who was previously a teacher at Arkleston Primary - stays with them at Renfrew High until December, and then the whole process starts again with the next cohort of P7s after the Christmas break.

The role is part of the authority’s bid to tackle the dip in attainment and disengagement from learning that schools often see when children move from primary into secondary; it is part of a success story that, in February, earned Renfrewshire the country’s first “excellent” Education Scotland inspection rating for closing the attainment gap between rich and poor. There are transition teachers like Thomson working in each of the authority’s 11 secondaries and their feeder primaries, spending half the year working in primary and half the year working in secondary.

The idea is that these teachers - 12 in total, all of whom are from a primary background - will slowly but surely bridge the gap between primary and secondary, particularly when it comes to learning and teaching.

Scotland is meant to have a “3-18 curriculum”, but it is widely acknowledged that there remains a disconnect between the two sectors.

This has a greater impact on pupils from poorer socio-economic backgrounds who, the research suggests, are more likely to flounder when they make the move to secondary. Therefore, it is the council’s funding from the Scottish government to close the attainment gap between pupils from the least- and most-deprived backgrounds that is paying for the new posts.

Renfrewshire Council is one of the Scottish government’s nine Attainment Challenge authorities; it received £4.7 million in the 2018-19 financial year for its Scottish Attainment Challenge primary and secondary programme.

Each transition teacher - while supporting all P7 pupils - also homes in on a small target group of around 20 pupils whom they think might be in danger of hitting the buffers. The pupils are selected based on their literacy and numeracy performance, whether they live in an area of deprivation and if they claim free school meals and clothing grants.

Not all children ‘settle in’ well

However, Thomson is quick to point out that this raw data is considered alongside the deep knowledge that class teachers, transition teachers and headteachers have of pupils.

“Just because you live in SIMD 1 [the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation’s most severe category of poverty] does not mean you are going to struggle when you get to high school,” she says.

However, there is an association between low economic status and less positive transition. In 2008, the longitudinal Effective Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education (EPPSE) project looked at how the move from primary to secondary had affected more than 500 children. It concluded that most had a positive transition experience, but “a noticeable minority” did not.

EPPSE found that, of the children living in the most deprived households, 72 per cent did not get used to the new routines in secondary school with great ease, and 58 per cent did not settle in well. Of the most affluent children, 50 per cent did not get used to the new routines with great ease and 39 per cent did not settle in well.

“As a middle-class dad, when my child goes off to secondary, I’m sorting everything out, I’m on the phone to the school, I will deal with it,” says Steven Quinn, Renfrewshire Council’s assistant director for education.

“But not everybody has that familiarity with the system and that confidence. Young people from more disadvantaged backgrounds are already behind when they come to school. You can’t allow a transition to add a further layer of complication.”

The key to successful transition was “social adjustment, institutional adjustment and curriculum interest and continuity”, according to EPPSE.

‘Lack of consistency’

In Scotland, we have become “pretty good” at induction by helping pupils from different schools get to know each other, allowing them to meet their new teachers and to get to know their way around their new schools, says Zoe Inglis, who is responsible for transitions in Renfrewshire and coordinates the transition-teacher team. However, the thorny issue of greater curricular continuity between the sectors has been less effectively tackled, she believes.

“There is a big gap around curricular progression,” says Inglis who, before taking on her current role, was a principal teacher of guidance at Gryffe High, also in Renfrewshire.

“So, as that child moves from one school to another, are they continuing that upward trajectory? Are they continuing to learn at pace? You see children who make the transition into S1 who plateau or sometimes regress. It’s about continuity of learning.”

A review of the research literature into primary-secondary transitions, published by the University of Dundee in February, found “a lack of consistency in the pedagogical approaches used by primary and secondary school teachers” (bit.ly/TransitionsResearch). It recommended “better ongoing dialogue between primary and secondary schools” and said teachers from the different sectors should “have opportunities to work in each other’s classes, so that they are able to understand each other’s pedagogical approaches and introduce more consistency”.

Professor Divya Jindal-Snape, the University of Dundee’s chair of education, inclusion and life transitions, led the review. Jindal-Snape - who has been researching transitions for more than 20 years - welcomes the transition-teachers approach because it acknowledges that moving up to secondary is “an ongoing process” and not something that can take place during a one-off visit. She also warns against seeing the transition to secondary school in too negative a light: it appears to be positive for around 70 per cent of pupils (see box).

According to Inglis, the transition teachers - who also work with parents (see box) - take their experience of the secondary curriculum into primary schools, where they highlight small changes to learning and teaching that might make transition smoother. Equally, when the pupils get to secondary, the transition teacher shares primary approaches to learning and teaching, so that secondary staff become increasingly familiar with what has come before. The change to the way maths is taught at Renfrew High is one example of the impact this is having.

While primary teachers are used to using visualisation in maths, modelling concepts using objects is more unusual in secondary, says Renfrew High headteacher Billy Burke, who began his career as a maths teacher.

“Maths teachers come more naturally from the theoretical side, whereas working with Laura, we have gained confidence in using the hands-on materials more commonly seen in primary classrooms. That has been brought in successfully to the secondary context to enable the kids to visualise better; then you move on to the theoretical side.”

Amanda Welsh is one of the school’s maths teachers who has been inspired to try the resources in her lessons, and she describes the impact as “huge”. When the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy was still running - its final results were published in 2017 - fractions were consistently highlighted as an area Scottish pupils struggled with. However, Welsh’s S1 pupils have just had their best result on a fractions test and she attributes that to the use of Cuisenaire rods - coloured rods that range in length from 1cm to 10cm and can be used to teach everything from addition to algebra.

“Having the support of Laura as a transition teacher just gave me the confidence to try these things that are new to me but were being used in the primary schools,” says Welsh. “It’s made a huge difference because the kids can actually manipulate these resources so they can see that one-third plus one-third makes two-thirds. They can physically see that and so we can move from that to the pictorial and then to the abstract where we are no longer using the materials.”

She adds: “It helps with transition as well. Those S1s are used to using these resources but, previously, they would have come up to secondary school and never seen them again. Now we are building on what they are used to.”

Thomson’s input and in-depth knowledge of the primary curriculum has also prompted Renfrew’s maths department to tweak its curriculum so that it is a better fit for the S1 pupils when they arrive.

“She can tell us not just what they have covered but how they have covered it - how they have actually been taught it,” says depute head Andrew Sutherland, who is also a maths teacher.

Other barriers for pupils entering secondary can be as simple as differences in the language used, says Thomson. Through being in the Renfrew High maths department, she realised that at primary, pupils talked about “multiples” whereas at secondary, they tended to refer to “factors”; differing terminology may confuse pupils and stop them making the connection to prior learning, she says.

Similarly, Thomson discovered that for the new S1s, the prospect of being asked to write essays was perceived as scary.

She found, however, that she could quickly ease their anxiety by referring to something they were accustomed to doing in primary: extended writing.

Terminology matters

Meanwhile, at Trinity High, another school in Renfrewshire, transition teacher Karen Wilson has also come across instances where differing terminology could trip pupils up and set them back. In primary, teachers talk about “comprehension” and in secondary, it’s “close reading”; in primary, teachers refer to “wow words” - those that make a piece of writing more vivid or interesting - and in secondary, they talk about “word choice”.

A secondary teacher using one set of terminology might assume the blank stares from the pupils in front of them mean they can’t do something. The likelihood is that they can, but are used to it being “spoken about in a different way”, says Quinn. He adds: “In the past, the teacher might have decided to start again, but they don’t need to. That’s why we need consistent language, pedagogy and curriculum, and [to work] with parents so we get the seamless learning experience that makes for a great start.”

Renfrew High English teacher Isobel Lockhart admits that, in the past, she has been guilty of “seeing primary and secondary as two distinct education systems” and starting afresh when pupils came into S1.

Now, she feels better able to tailor her teaching to the new S1s owing to the “greater depth of insight” Thomson has given her into the pupils’ capabilities. “It can take us as teachers a while to ascertain their real level and ability,” says Lockhart. “So, I think we’ve been able to get to that place much quicker and really push them.”

Information, of course, follows children from primary to secondary school, but the teachers say unless a child has additional support needs, they are unlikely to know a great deal more than their name and their level. However, the Curriculum for Excellence levels are broad, spanning several year groups.

“Some children might have lain low in their first year, but Laura can say, ‘Wait a minute, you were a star in that group at primary’,” says Burke. “It stops them from just being able to keep their head down.”

S2 pupil Lauren McPeake loved primary school, and P7 in particular, but found secondary overwhelming. She hated moving between classes, felt all eyes were on her and was acutely aware she was one of the youngest pupils.

Both she and S1 pupil Glen Thomas talk about feeling safer and more confident now, owing to Thomson’s presence.

Burke adds: “It’s the difference of actually having a teacher working side by side with other teachers, sharing ideas in real time, day to day, and helping shape the curriculum. It is worth its weight in gold. You could have as many twilight development sessions as you liked, but you get so much more from having someone who is just part of the team.”

And why has it taken so long? Because, says Inglis, now they have the money and time to see it through.

Emma Seith is a reporter for Tes Scotland. She tweets @Emma_Seith

This article originally appeared in the 22 March 2019 issue under the headline “Ready for the high jump”