The transition to secondary school and the dip in attainment that so many pupils experience is a perennial problem and something that has occupied the minds of educationalists for years.
In 2017, Renfrewshire Council, one of the nine authorities targeted by the Scottish Attainment Challenge, began using some of its extra funding to pursue an interesting solution. It employed a team of “transition teachers” - 12 primary specialists who worked across each of the authority’s secondaries and their feeder primaries.
In early 2019, Tes Scotland visited some of the authority’s primary and secondary schools to see the model in action.
The transition teachers spent six months getting to know the P7 pupils from January to June. Then, when they moved to secondary school in August, the transition teachers moved with them and taught them alongside their new secondary teachers - mainly in maths and English, but also in social subjects and science. After the Christmas holidays, the whole process started again, and the transition teachers started building relationships with the next batch of P7 pupils.
The scheme wasn’t just about ensuring that the new S1s had at least one familiar face among the secondary staff - it was also about ensuring curricular continuity.
At the time, Zoe Inglis, who in 2019 worked for Renfrewshire Council and coordinated the transition-teacher team, said that she thought Scotland had got “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. However, she believed the thorny issue of continuity of learning between the sectors had been tackled less effectively.
The purpose of the transition teachers was to bridge the gap and take their experience of the secondary curriculum into primary schools, and vice versa.
This flow of information had led to the maths teachers at Renfrew High School introducing “concrete materials” - from cubes and counters to number lines and “algebra rods” - into their lessons. These hands-on materials are more commonly seen in primary classrooms, but the secondary maths teachers were willing to embrace them so that they were building on what the S1s were used to. In the transition teacher, they also had a primary specialist on hand to support them.
The transition teachers also identified terminology that differed between the two phases, which could trip pupils up.
For example, in primary, teachers talked about “comprehension” and in secondary, it was “close reading”. In primary, teachers referred to “wow words” - those that make a piece of writing more vivid or interesting - and in secondary, they talked about “word choice”. And when it came to maths, primary teachers referred to “multiples”, and in secondary, the teachers used the term “factors”.
A teacher using these words and getting blank looks might “decide to start again, and they don’t need to”, said Renfrewshire assistant education director (now children’s services director) Steven Quinn.
A secondary English teacher, meanwhile, said that it could take a while to gauge S1 students’ “real level and ability”. However, with the support of a teacher who was familiar with them from primary, they had been able to “get to that place much quicker and really push them”.
The only question left to ask was - why had it not been done before? According to Inglis, before the Scottish Attainment Challenge they just hadn’t had the money and the time to see it through.
What happened next?
If we thought that transition was complicated and difficult before 2020, that has only been exacerbated by the pandemic. But, as ever, teachers and schools have come up with ingenious ways to try and make the move from primary to secondary as smooth as possible.
They have had to, at a time when carefully crafted transition programmes have not been able to proceed - given the necessarily cautious approaches to mixing of pupils from different schools that have been part of attempts to curb the spread of Covid. Glasgow’s Bannerman High School, for example, used footage captured by a drone to help primary pupils familiarise themselves with the layout of their new school, as part of a 22-minute video that also included interviews with teachers.
In Renfrewshire, the 12 transition teachers continue to bridge the gap between primary and secondary. During lockdown, they supported pupils to engage with online learning and created a pack of materials to support P7 to S1 induction. In April, they were able to return to work in cluster primary schools.
Teachers working in the authority say the transition teachers have proved more crucial than ever owing to the disruption caused by the pandemic - a recent survey found that 91 per cent of school staff believed transition support had made a difference to pupils’ learning, confidence and progression in lockdown.
However, under the new version of the Scottish Attainment Challenge (SAC) launching next year, the government plans to share the £43 million previously targeted at nine councils - including Renfrewshire Council - across all 32 Scottish local authorities. In Renfrewshire, funding will go from £3.7 million in 2022-23 to £1.3 million in 2025-26.
When asked if transition teachers would remain in the authority, a spokesperson for Renfrewshire Council said that it would be working on a plan over the course of December and January that “must take into account [the] reduced funding available”. It said that the plan would be based on “attainment and impact data”, as well as consultation.
Like many projects in the SAC era, transition teachers will have to wait and see if they can survive the vicissitudes of government funding policies.
Emma Seith is a reporter for Tes Scotland
