News Update Continued 2

Thursday 1st November 2007

The week is beginning to draw in and the news today only mentions children/education twice and very briefly.

The first story was of a 7-year-old girl on holiday in the Yorkshire Dales with her family, she became stranded on some stepping-stones and was safely rescued.

The second story mentions the battle that children face when moving to secondary school. Many can’t settle when they move schools, playing a large part in their performance, whether academic or behaviour.

One of the schools I have visited held a productive assembly where the children talked about what they were happy, scared and sad about moving to a new school. It highlighted that they shared the same concerns and eased some of the apprehension that could have built over the summer. They also received a book that was bright and colourful, with places to write their timetable, contact phone numbers, funny poems about teachers, some doodle pages etc. A few days after the assembly I spoke to some of the children and their discussion showed that some of their major concerns had changed, for example before the assembly they were worried about making friends and getting lost in the new school. After the assembly the concerns focused more on having more homework and so not having much time to play in their X Box!

Moving schools, especially from a small local village primary school, can be very stressful for children and as perspective primary teachers we should try to ease as many of these concerns before they leave. Some children come from a school where the teachers and parents socialise together in the tight nit community, where everyone literally knows their names. They then move to the bottom ranking year (in terms of pupils..year 7 is obviously at the bottom) where they don’t know the other students, no one knows them, students or teachers.

For anyone adults and children starting a new job/school can be very daunting and the ability to make a smooth transition is a life long skill that will help carry them through.