Executive summary
This report considers how well schools work together to support pupils’ transition from primary into secondary school. It focuses on how well schools work together to ensure that their curricula and teaching develop pupils’ knowledge, skills, understanding and learning behaviours effectively across transition. It considers how schools support the well-being of learners at this important transition point.
It is based on engagement with a sample of 23 primary schools, 13 secondary schools and 3 all-age schools, and evidence from our inspection and follow-up work since September 2022. We also took evidence from three regional school improvement services and three local authorities.
Our findings show that headteachers or senior leaders from most clusters of schools meet regularly to discuss Curriculum for Wales and how to support pupils’ transition from primary to secondary school. In nearly all cases, leaders focused well on ensuring that there were beneficial induction arrangements to support pupils’ well-being and implemented strategies to support pupils with additional learning needs (ALN). However, in many cases, and for a range of reasons, transition work is not effective enough in supporting the development of a continuum of learning for all pupils that ensures that they make systematic and continual progress in their knowledge, skills, understanding and learning behaviours from primary into secondary school.
In a minority of cases, clusters have set up groups of teachers to consider examples of pupils’ learning, to help them begin to develop a shared understanding of progression across their schools. However, these practices are in their infancy and, in most cases, there is still not a strong understanding of what progression looks like in most clusters of schools. As a result, these practices have not improved how well learning progresses from primary into secondary schools strongly enough.
During our visits, leaders pointed to a range of issues that made cluster work on developing curriculum progression difficult, including co-ordinating the work of multiple primary schools with one secondary school, different interpretations of the curriculum within the same cluster of schools, or having the time and resources to release staff to work together. They identified the broad nature of the descriptions of learning as something that the staff in their schools were still grappling with. Secondary school leaders often identified that changes to GCSE qualifications were adding to the difficulty of making decisions about their curriculum, but in more effective schools they also recognised that improving teaching was vital to ensuring that pupils gained good qualifications.
In a few cases, clusters of primary and secondary schools have worked together positively to map out knowledge, skills and experiences across all areas of learning and experience (AoLE) and have used this to begin to develop a shared understanding of progression. However, even where this is in place, secondary schools do not always use it to take account of pupils’ prior learning well enough. As a result, learning in Year 7 and beyond did not always support pupils’ continuous and progressive development.
In all-age schools, despite the potential of the all-age approach to learning, curriculum coherence and planning for progression were not always strong. In the best cases, schools were working purposefully to develop one progressive continuum of learning from age 3 to 16 and were beginning to use this to ensure that they supported pupils’ progress. However, a minority of all-age settings had made limited progress on developing a coherent approach to the curriculum and still considered learning in separate primary and secondary phases.
Many schools have provided teachers with a range of professional learning to support the introduction of Curriculum for Wales. However, in only a few cases had clusters of schools shared approaches to teaching or considered how they could ensure that teaching strategies supported pupils to make effective and continuous progress from primary into secondary school. Many were embedding strategies to support pupils to be more effective learners and recognised the importance of ensuring that pupils developed skills to monitor, regulate and assess learning.
However, in only a few cases had schools considered how they could ensure that pupils continued to develop these skills and dispositions effectively when they move into secondary school.
In nearly all cases, primary schools passed on a broad and varied range of information about pupils’ learning and progress to secondary schools prior to transition. A minority of clusters were beginning to consider how to share information on pupils’ progress, in line with Curriculum for Wales. However, in nearly all cases, there was little clarity about what expectations of learning and progress were, even within the same cluster. As a result, these processes did little to support continuity in pupils’ learning. In nearly all cases, primary schools shared the outcomes of the
Welsh Government’s personalised assessments with secondary schools. However, nearly all schools focused on sharing the standardised score only. They were not considering well enough the wide range of information about pupils’ learning available from the assessment or how this might be used to further support teaching and learning.
In nearly all cases, schools supported pupils’ induction into secondary school well. They often arranged face-to-face meetings between leaders or teachers from primary schools and staff from secondary schools that allowed for a beneficial sharing of information. Primary and secondary schools worked together conscientiously to support the transition of pupils with ALN. Often staff with responsibility for pupils with ALN began working with their feeder primary schools when pupils were in Year 6 or in Year 5. These processes helped secondary schools understand and cater for
these pupils’ needs supportively.
In most cases, clusters of schools supported many aspects of pupils’ well-being effectively as they moved from primary to into secondary school. In many cases, staff from secondary schools visited their feeder primary schools to speak to pupils early in Year 6 and in a very few cases when they are in Year 5. In nearly all cases, clusters of schools identified pupils who could find transition more difficult than their peers and put in place a useful range of supportive activities and visits that helped these pupils transition to secondary school. In the best cases, schools worked
together to plan and put in place strategies based on individual pupils’ needs.
Many leaders were aware of the updated guidance on, and requirements of, transition planning, and used this to plan pupils’ induction into secondary school appropriately. However, in many cases, transition plans lacked clarity on how schools would support continuity in pupils’ learning, and how they would achieve this through curriculum design and planning for learning and teaching.