Research over the past 20 years has highlighted a growing concern at failing standards in Years 7 and 8, with one study showing that around four out of 10 pupils failed to make any progress in maths, use of English of reading in Year 7.
Wales has also been concerned by the dip in performance at this stage. Its KS3 strategy, Aiming for Excellence, does not emulate the more prescriptive approach in England. Instead, it is a programme of resources and practical advice, based on existing good practice. Schools have also received extra funding to devise transition plans supporting pupils as they move from primary to secondary school.
In England the Government has focused on tight lesson structures, capitalising on the success of the literacy and numeracy policies which have helped raise standards in primary schools. A typical lesson should contain a bright starter activity to engage pupils' interest, the main teaching session and a plenary where students sum up what they have learned. A smoother transition from secondary to primary is another linchpin of the strategy.
Initiatives and case studies
Research
Resources
See also
Three initiatives which targeted the dip in performance between primary and secondary have delivered marked improvements in pupils' literacy and numeracy, in some cases dramatically. They also boosted pupils' motivation and confidence and eased the transition from primary 7 (P7) to secondary 1 (S1).
An evaluation of the three pilot schemes, published by the Scottish Executive, found that the models developed in North Lanarkshire in literacy and in East Ayrshire in maths could work in any area, provided key factors such as staff resources and commitment were in place.
The Enable project at Eastbank Academy in Glasgow, where primary-trained teachers used their methodologies with the most vulnerable and least able pupils, was felt to be particularly suitable for areas of high deprivation and had a 'significant impact' on attainment. The percentages of pupils who were still at level C or below fell from 93% in reading at the start of S1 to 30% by the end of S2, from 87% to 33% in writing and from 91% to 26% in maths.
Eastbank teachers warned, however, that senior managements would have to share their vision to make a similar scheme work; otherwise, there was a danger of Enable being seen as just a "dumping ground for poor kids". Primary teachers in the two other authorities said they were confident their pupils would no longer be 'marking time' or repeating work when they moved into S1, because the secondary school had better information about the primary curriculum and the pupils' strengths and weaknesses.
In North Lanarkshire, two former assistant principal teachers in English were appointed as literacy development officers and targeted P6 - S2 pupils in their secondary school cluster. This led to improvements in writing and particularly reading attainment in both secondaries, according to the report by Ruth Bryan and Morag Treanor of MVA Consultancy, with support from Malcolm Hill of the Glasgow Centre for the Child and Society.
For more in-depth information on the pilots, visit www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2335819
(TES Scotland, 26 January 2007)
In November 2004, the Welsh Assembly published a consultation document setting out how all local education authorities were required to have an official transition policy to help smooth the way for children going to secondary school. Out-of-hours learning projects in 10 of the 22 Welsh education authorities, which brought together pupils and teachers from Years 6 and 7, had already shown results.
A review by the inspection agency, Estyn, earlier in 2004, said: "pupils' and parents' fears are being allayed and there is a noticeable raising of pupils' self-confidence and self-esteem." Activities like drama productions and outdoor adventure weekends had a positive effect on children's attitudes, according to inspectors, and also developed key skills such as speaking and listening to help them adapt to the key stage 3 curriculum. Standards often slip as children move from primary to secondary school, and concerns remain about results in Wales at KS3.
A spokesman for the Welsh Assembly said all LEAs will have to have transition plans in place by September 2007, ready for pupils moving to secondary school the following autumn. The long time-scale will allow the changes to dovetail with changes to KS2 and KS3 assessment proposed as a result of the Daugherty review of key stage tests.
Teaching unions said that the Assembly's plans to smooth pupils' transition between the sectors, by creating bridging units working with older primary children, would merely add to teachers' existing workload.
(TES Cymru, 29 October 2004)
Pupils who need extra help during the early years of secondary school are being taught by primary teachers in parts of Scotland. A series of pilot projects had primary teachers working with pupils in secondary schools and vice versa.
The Glasgow project at Eastbank Academy was an expansion of the Enable programme which the school had been running for two years. Pupils who have made least progress in local primaries are selected for the Enable programme and during S1 and S2 receive lessons in literacy and numeracy (one-third of all their lessons) from a primary-trained teacher.
By reducing the number of teachers pupils encounter in a week and by delivering the literacy and numeracy elements of the secondary curriculum using primary teaching methods, pupil transition from primary to secondary is eased. The aim is to ensure that by the end of S2 pupils have attained the basic skills needed to effectively tackle the S3/S4 curriculum. Results to date indicate that the Enable pupils have made better progress than would have otherwise been the case.
(www.scotland.gov.uk, 17 September 2004)
In October 2003 action was taken to tackle the stubborn
failure of many younger pupils to make progress in reading
and writing in Scotland. A project entitled Building Bridges in Literacy
P6-S2 was launched in June 2003, organised by Learning and Teaching
Scotland who managed the project. The initiative had one piece of advice from HMI:
use quality texts that do not leave the kids "bored out
of their skulls".
The move was launched following an inspectorate report which
exposed major weaknesses in teaching English. The report,
Improving Achievement in English Language in Primary and Secondary
schools, found:
- Slow progress from P4 to S6
- Decline in reading for pleasure after S1-S2
- Difficulties with writing and analysis from P7-S4
- Around one in 10 pupils with a Standard grade award fails
to achieve a National Qualification
- A quarter of pupils with a Standard grade Credit fail
to achieve a Higher pass.
Every one of Scotland's 32 education authorities signed
up to the Building Bridges project. They were asked to
select one secondary school and its associated primaries to
improve their reading and writing programmes, taking account
of the research.
This inclusiveness was also spread beyond the confines of
English departments; at least one other subject teacher was involved in each of the school projects as well as a school
librarian. "Their presence will reinforce the significance of language
development across the curriculum and promote the key message
about reading for enjoyment," said Alison Wishart, the
principal curriculum officer leading the project for Learning
and Teaching Scotland.
(TESS, 13 June 2003)
Up-to-date information on Building Bridges for Literacy is available
at www.ltscotland.org.uk/buildingbridges.
Many pupils starting secondary school in England in the autumn
of 2002 spent their first two weeks finishing off work
started at primary school. The Department for Education and Skills published
two units of work designed to smooth the transition from primary
to secondary school. The four-week English unit used a 'journal' - inspired by
the ship's log in Michael Morpurgo's novel Kensuke's Kingdom - for two weeks at the end of primary school and continues
with them for two weeks at the start of secondary school.
(TES, 24 May 2002)
Primary-secondary co-ordinators in South Lanarkshire have been working in clusters, focusing
on basic standards between P6 and S2 and are said to have
been almost unanimously successful in helping to tackle key
transition difficulties that have dogged pupils and schools.
Other initiatives have contributed but the co-ordinators have
been vital in developing resources and pushing best practice.
Coordinators worked with teachers to lessen the stereotypical
beliefs about activity in each sector. They improved the curricular
links "with a lessening of the mismatch or standstill effect
regularly reported by HMI when pupils enter S1 from primary
schools," Professor McCall says.
The transfer of information from primary to secondary was
improved and pupils were impressed because they felt they
had "somebody you know" in secondary school. Pupils who took
part reported they had fewer fears before, during and after
transfer than those who had not been involved with the coordinators.
The review highlighted the coordinators' role in identifying
children that might be at risk when they make the transfer
from primary to secondary and says that action can be taken.
(TESS, 21 June 2002)
A study by Glasgow University researchers in 2003 showed that ethnic minorities face the most difficulties and often struggle with their English language skills. The study, involving 600 pupils in three Glasgow secondaries and three primaries, found a generally positive picture of the transfer form primary to secondary. Most P7 [the final year of primary school] pupils are anxious about stepping up to secondary school and fear they will get lost, have too much homework and be picked on. But most quickly start to enjoy being in a bigger school. Bullying is seen as less of a problem than in primary.
Negotiating the transition to secondary school, by Catherine Graham and Malcolm Hill of Glasgow's University's Centre for the Child and Society, is published in Spotlight 89 by the SCRE Centre at Glasgow.
(TESS, 24 October 2003)
In 2003, researchers looking at children's transfer to secondary school found that pupils are pressured in Year 6, bored in Year 7 and ignored in Year 8. Attempts to help children adapt successfully to secondary school need to look beyond years 6 and 7, according to research by Maurice Galton, John Gray and Jean Ruddock of Cambridge University.
The report for the Department for Education and Skills recommended primaries put more effort into Years 3 and 4, while secondaries give more status to Year 8. They worked with 50 schools and 12 local education authorities on transition and also tracked pupils progress with 300 primaries. They found 82% of primary school heads used practice tests in Year 6, and 74% introduced booster classes.
Although schools were now paying more attention to transfer arrangements than three years ago, secondary teacher visits tended to be in June when primaries were concentrating on creative work.
The report said: "Secondary teachers are now better informed about the key stage 2 programmes of study, but many still hold over-optimistic views of primary practice. The reality is that for many pupils, much of Year 6 in the run-up to the tests consists largely of revision with an emphasis on whole-class direct instruction."
It said pupils did not find Year 7 sufficiently challenging or different from Year 6, although this varied according to subject.
Bridging units, work begun in primary and continued in secondary, seem to work best when they had been constructed by schools. One authority which had developed units in the three core subjects, faced resentment from primary teachers who wanted to cover other subjects after the tests, and pupils who did not want to return to primary work once they were at 'big' school. The researchers also found that pupils thought Year 8 was unimportant.
(TES, 4 July 2003)
Ofsted, July 2002, reference HMI 550
Ofsted's inspection of transfer arrangements from primary
to secondary school found that the pastoral aspects worked
well for the Year 7 pupils interviewed. However, the 32 primary
and 16 secondary schools visited were making limited progress
with the curricular aspects of transfer, with few signs of
continuity or preparation for the changes in teaching and
learning. The progress of schools towards the demanding targets
at key stage 3 for 2004 is likely to be restricted, Ofsted
says, while these weaknesses in continuity and progressions
between key stages 2 and 3 remain.
Reasons for optimism are
the new transition units for English and maths, the catch-up
programme in Year 7, specific funding for secondary schools
to improve transfer arrangements and national developments
on the transfer of data. As a result the Government announced that schools would use electronic transfer of records, new "transition units" focusing on maths and English, summer schools, catch-up classes, and new materials and training for teachers.
www.ofsted.gov.uk/publications/index.cfm?fuseaction=pubs.summary&id=309
In 2002 the National Literacy Strategy introduced booster literacy training for Year 3 teachers to try to counteract the Year 3 dip in achievement. The dip first appeared in national studies in the 1970s and 1980s. It was charted by the Office for Standards in Education in annual reports from 1994-98, when Year 3 teachers were consistently revealed to gain fewer top inspection grades, and more unsatisfactory ones, than any other primary teachers.
Some had argued that heads put their newest and weakest teachers in charge of this year. An investigation, led by Professor Jean Ruddock of Cambridge University's school of education, suggested that the key-stage changeover itself may be to blame. Interviewing heads, teachers and Year 3 pupils themselves, she and her colleagues found the children both excited and anxious at the prospect of moving up a stage, while teachers stressed that they would be making many more demands on the children.
The study found that where children's academic foundations were shakier, and/or where teachers did not explicitly teach pupils how to meet these new demands, disillusionment and disappointment then set in.
These problems could be compounded by new surroundings, new adults and new rules; disrupted friendships; and less parental help, either because schools had over-stressed the importance of children working independently or because parents themselves were less academically confident with Year 3 work.
The report Sustaining Pupils Progress at Year 3 can be obtained from the Faculty of Education, Homerton College, Cambridge.
(TES, 15 November 2002)
Research by Homerton College, Cambridge and the NFER published in September 1999 found that 40% of pupils lose motivation and make no progress in the year after transfer, with many pupils falling significantly behind in their work. The situation was very similar throughout the UK. 7% of pupils unlearn reading, maths and language skills in their first year in secondary schools and their marks can drop by up to a third in standardised tests, according to a study by Professor Maurice Galton.
Also pupil motivation and performance dropped dramatically between years 7 and 8 as the novelty of school transfer wears off. A similar dip occurs as children transfer from infants to juniors, with children transferring to middle schools at the end of Year 4 showing the biggest loss, with one in eight children showing a major drop in test scores.
A survey of 215 schools found that the information exchanged on pupil transfer was twice as likely to be about administrative or pastoral issues than about the curriculum.
Download this research from www.dfes.gov.uk/research/data/uploadfiles/RB131.doc
(TES, 3 September 1999)
Research released in November 1997 by The National Foundation
for Educational Research and the QCA found that all 11-year-olds'
reading scores declined between May and September - even those
who had attended the summer literacy scheme.
Primary-secondary liaison: As a result of the above
findings, the QCA launched a consultation document aimed
at speeding up the exchange of vital information between primary
and secondary schools. In February 1998 it started an exercise
to examine pupils' progress in literacy from the middle of
one school year to the next - cutting out the complicating
effect of the summer holidays.
(Independent, 1 October 1998)
Graham Frater, Basic Skills Agency, March 2002
This free booklet surveys emerging practice to counter the dip in literacy between key stages 2 and 3, based on case studies from seven primary and seven secondary schools chosen by their LEAs as places with promising approaches. Support fell into three areas: explicit support for literacy, transition initiatives often supportive of literacy, and general language development initiatives not focused on transition.
Contact Basic Skills Agency publications on 0870 600 2400.
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