Transition from primary to secondary is a landmark moment in your child’s life and can be equally important for you as parents. As such, our transition programme tries to provide enough opportunities throughout the school year for you and your child to find out about our Secondary Campus.
This primarily takes the form of a series of transition days for students. The first of these takes place in Term 1, with a wonderful morning of Creative and Expressive Arts lessons. This day aims to make the children feel more comfortable with our campus and meet some of our teachers. Transition Day 2, in Term 2, includes taster sessions for all of the Languages on offer. As well as allowing your children to gain more confidence on our campus, this also will help them make their Language choice for Year 7. Finally, in Term 3, students come to the campus for two full days and have a timetable of lessons similar to that which they will have in Year 7. By the end of this transition series, your child will have trialled many of our Secondary Campus experiences and feel confident and enthused about their upcoming move.
Opportunities for you as parents sit alongside this programme with a Welcome Evening in Term 1, and a Transition Experience in Term 3. These sessions aim to make you feel comfortable and excited about your child coming to secondary school and also provide you with a range of information to help understand the differences between our two campuses. In addition, you will get the chance to meet key members of staff including, where possible, the teacher who will be your child’s tutor in Year 7.
Alongside this formal programme, we also try to provide other opportunities for your child to feel more comfortable with transitioning to secondary school. These include hosting sporting events at our secondary campus, and students and teachers travelling down to JB to work with the Year 6s.
Additional support with transition is offered to more vulnerable students or students with particular needs; this will include an extra transition morning and meetings and discussions with families so that personalised learning is structured.
Naturally, transition doesn’t end at the end of Year 6 and our strong pastoral support structure at the Secondary Campus and our Personalised Learning Conversations early in Term 1 of Year 7, enable us to ensure we are supporting you and your child as much as possible during this transition time.
