Photo by Håkon Grimstad on Unsplash

I have been having quite a few conversations about transition recently. I don’t mean transition as an administrative event or the spreadsheet passed from one school to another, or the meeting in July where information is exchanged about pupils. What I mean is the intellectual transition from one phase of education to the next.

And the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that one of the biggest risks at the end of Year 6 is that Year 7 becomes a reset point. Pupils arrive in secondary school having already spent seven years learning. They have read books, encountered ideas, built vocabulary, carried out investigations, written at length, made things, performed, argued, questioned and wondered. And yet secondary colleagues can sometimes be surprised by what pupils have already done.

The problem is that if we underestimate what pupils are bringing with them, we risk giving them less demanding work just at the point when we should be building on what they already know.

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I recently wrote on LinkedIn that primary is not preparation for secondary. A thoughtful response challenged that slightly. Each phase of life, the writer argued, does prepare us for what comes next. And I think that is right. My concern is with primary being reduced to preparation for secondary. Primary has intellectual value in its own right. Children are entitled to rich, demanding and worthwhile experiences now, not simply because those experiences will make them more successful later.

But good curriculum thinking also means recognising that learning has a journey. What happens in one phase should give pupils something substantial to build on in the next. So perhaps the better question at transition is not “Are these pupils ready for secondary school?” but “What are they bringing with them, and what should we do with it next?”

Until next time

Mary

Thanks for reading Curriculum 101!