Want to improve educational outcomes? Get out of your office

Dave Harris is deadly serious. “Just imagine that the government decided every child would change to a different family when they were 11. You’d walk downstairs on your 11th birthday, and your parents would say, ‘hello darling, your new home is with Mr and Mrs Smith four streets away. We hope you have a good life’.

“We smile because that’s stupid – but that’s what we do in transition. How can that make sense when we know learning is linked to how we feel? Over the world, the statistics are damning on the effect of transition: at its best, it stalls kids’ learning, but too frequently, it is the point from which it never recovers.”

Dave – a former secondary head teacher and leader of a pioneering 3-18 school and now a leadership consultant – is a man on a mission. All too often, he says, the education system mistakes transition for induction days. In his book and at training days across the UK, he argues for a fundamental change to an inadequate process.

“Where primary and secondary schools are working well, children will have done projects in the secondary from year four or five, and relationships will be there. We should encourage a relationship with schooling and the concept that this is a journey for life.”

When Dave became a secondary head teacher, his first actions included getting to know local primary head teachers and building relationships. “It always upset me at transition meetings to find that primaries sent head teachers while secondaries sent a senior teacher. Transition should be a way of life and very much under the remit of the head teacher.”

So, how does he think leaders in a fragmented system can improve things?

“I suggest going round as a group and watching learning, from the youngest kid in the area to the oldest. Drop into lessons, spend a few minutes there and get a feel. Is it a nice smooth development from the youngest to the eldest? If it is, that’s rare – you usually find lots of stuttering, and then you’ll need to talk about expectations.”

It’s vital to agree on those expectations. If schools linked through transition include one focusing on academic rigour and the other on building positive learning experiences through fun, then an effective transition will be hard.

“In too many places, I see secondary and primary schools doing what they think is right, but taken as a whole, it doesn’t make any sense because they have such different goals. Because it isn’t about doing different things the same; it is about the intentions behind the activities.”

Language is important: don’t tell children they “won’t get away” with something at secondary or that lessons may be boring. Teachers and schools should see learning as a long journey rather than a relay race where children are handed over for the next stage. His experience leading a 3-18 school showed him how transition could work. He believes the demands of Ofsted and the pandemic have exacerbated the problems, but he’s optimistic change will eventually come – initially in Wales because of the national curriculum being discontinued in favour of a school-led system.

“I just hope we can get people thinking, not blaming each other, and wanting a relationship,” he says. “Don’t make assumptions. Work at it and persist and pester. If you’re a head teacher, don’t give the job to somebody else –be there yourself. Everybody is busy, but the strong relationship between primary and secondary school leaders is the biggest gift we can give kids.”

You can hear Dave talk more about transition on a recent episode of the School Leadership Podcast: www.naht.org.uk/rd/Talking-about-transition

‘Independent thinking on transition: fostering better collaboration between primary and secondary schools’, by Dave Harris is published by Independent Thinking Press.