Newsletter Friday, 5th July 2013 Dear Parents, Carers, What makes a successful transition from Primary to Secondary school? A report was written by researchers from the University of Oxford, the Institute of Education in London, Birkbeck, University of London and the University of Nottingham back in 2008 to respond to the above question. The key findings are as follow: ‘The data analysis revealed five aspects of a successful transition. A successful transition for children involved:
Developing new friendship and improving their self esteem and confidence
Having settled so well in school life that they caused no concerns for their parents
Showing an increasing interest in school and school work
Getting used to their new routines and school organization with great ease
Experiencing curriculum continuity’
This week we had over 103 pupils tasting our curriculum for 5 days. It was very noticeable that on day 1, the year 6 pupils were confident enough to mix with other students from our school at breaktime and lunchtime. Staff witnessed conversations and interactions happening as if pupils and students had always worked together and been in the same institution. Pupils were very positive about the lessons they went to. They were particularly interested in the use of technology with the IPads and the smart table. We had a very successful open evening on Thursday between 4pm and 6pm and over 80 parents came to visit us. I did a presentation to parents outlining the vision, the ethos and culture for the school. Parents asked the following questions: You are promoted the 3Rs: Respect, Responsibility and Resilience. How do you promote Resilience? Resilience is about how you cope in difficult/unknown situation, it is about you persist and remain positive. We promote resilience through our tutor programme, assemblies, lessons and extra curricular activities. We reward resilience through VIVO, our reward system. What do you do for the Gifted and talented Students? First our staff differentiate in lessons by taking into account the needs of all of the students in their class. Second, we have a superb enrichment programme. We are intending to further improve our enrichment programme as we visit many schools looking at best practices. Do you have a PTA? At the moment we do not have a PTA. We would love to set this up and are very keen to work with parents to do this. There seemed to be an interest amongst few parents and I hope that we will be able to start this in September. What is the average class size? The normal average class size would be 25 however we cater for the needs of the students. We have appointed extra staff in English, Maths and Science to ensure that we can have some flexibility with groups as and when it is necessary. We are looking forward to the collaborative work and have scheduled our first meeting with the Headteachers from Ranvilles Infant and Junior School, Wallisdean Junior School and Redlands Primary School on 19 th September to plan our collaborative work for the new academic year. Nadine Powrie Headteacher