How much information do secondary schools get about new year 7s?

[Bookridden]

DD going to big school in September! It's a big, local academy. I'm just wondering how much her new school will know about her. Will it just be SATs results, or will they send details of her character, behaviour, family background etc? And will the secondary pay any attention? I don't really mind either way, but I am curious...

Secondary teacher here.

It totally depends on the school. CP concerns are passed on, along with sats results.

Anything else is down to the schools concerned. Some refuse to send anything, some send reams. It's very unlikely to be passed on to class teachers either way unless totally necessary.

We get a one sentence comment from class teacher. Some staff don’t read them at all as they like to make own judgements. I read them to get a feel for what the child might be like as the primary schools knew them so well. SEN/SATS/CP passed on (although CP not to classroom teacher)

I was told by my ds’s teacher they have a meeting and discuss each child . I know my ds’s teacher also has spoke to Senco and I have had a meeting with Senco from primary and secondary .
They are also aware of pupil premium children

Our Head of Year and his pastoral care officer visit all the schools where are new year 7s are coming from and get as much info as possible, from the school and by chatting to the students themselves.

Remember though that there could be 150 - 240 or more new Yr7s. It is incredibly difficult to retain information about new people you haven't met, even if it were just for 30 dc coming up from the class below in Primary.
If there is something really important, and it were my child, I'd arrange to go in and speak to the SENCo, or form teacher, or Head of Year or pastoral lead (depending on situ) in a 'belt and braces' way.

Interesting as my DD moves in Sept into year7, her academy school is massive 500year in take how they keep track of all that knowledge is mind boggling. The head of year visited the primary this week and I thought to myself they must be like a “head of school” with the sheer volume of students they look after!

If any information is passed on, then you should know about it, as the school would be required to tell you what information is being shared due to the GDPR legislation.

@SkiGirl007

Your dc school has an intake of 500 pupils in every year?!?!
That's extraordinary. How many form classes? 17? Do you not find that really big?

Most schools carry out a visit to children in primary and if possible have a chat with a teacher/ask for a written summary of anything useful to know. In particular secondaries want to know if there have been child protection, behavioural or difficult parent issues.

That info will go into a file.

Most of it will never be known by the 12+ teachers your DC will see every week. It will be on file and might be looked at by Head of Year who needs it, if an issue arises. Info which should be circulated would be things like medical needs (epipen users, epilepsy etc) and special educational needs and how these are to be met. Anything else is likely to be on a 'needs to know' basis. In some schools Form Teachers are asked to have a read through the file of students before taking them into their Form, but I think this happens less now.

So the school might have a range of information, but as there are so many children, for most children without any significant issues, no-one is likely to read the info or know it. Those files tend to get referred to for children who have issues of one kind or another so specific staff need to know the stuff, or an admin assistant is likely to go through them at the start, looking out for specifics such as special needs/medical which need to be flagged to more people.

For children without any specific needs, most children will enter their classrooms and the teacher won't know anything about them, unless perhaps their SATs results.