Transition to Y1

[learnandsay]

I read an ofstead study of now a large number of schools handle the transition from Reception into Year 1 and somewhere near the bottom of the study it said that typically the children who found the transition hard were:

the less able
ESL
the immature
SEN

isn't that stating the obvious, (or do I just think it's obvious because I read the report?)

In the old days was there all this fuss about the old fashioned equivalents of all these various profiles? Or did we just go to primary school, sit the 11+ (or not) and leave?

I know which is quite ironic as they take none of those reasons as to why some schools have lower national average children.

ESL, SEN, free school meals (not included, sure but maybe a sub category of less able) are physical things, but immature and less able, surely not barriers as such. They may require different techniques but they can still learn. My youngest has just turned two. There's noting remotely mature about her but she can still pick out her alphabet. She can't actually say alphabet. She also knows the difference between capital and lower case letters even though she doesn't know what either of those are; they're mummy and baby letters. At the moment we have daddy (huge capitals) mummy, capital and baby letters. Presumably at some point the daddy letters are going to leave home. It all makes perfect sense to them. Adults might struggle with some of it, but they don't seem to.

Having free school meals isn't a sub category of less able. It does mean the household has less money and that the household isn't receiving working tax credits (you can probably guess that my DC had FSM for a while after XH left and I wasn't working enough to get WTC. They are seemingly not less able).

There seems to be a statistical link between FSM and performance.

Having free school meals isn,t a sub category of the less able

^ That.

FSM and performance are statistically linked nationally, but it's a really crude measure.

As the poster above states, able DCs of divorcing parents and others temporally facing hard times get FSM, while DCs with parents in poorly paid work may not.

I think it more accurate to say there is a link between fsm and achievement, rather than ability. Pupils on fsm are more likely to under-achieve, clearly not the same as being of low ability in the first place.