Starting secondary -the bits you don’t think about

[anna1969]

Having read the thread on starting secondary school there are a few vitals as a teacher of 30+ years that I think are missing!

1. the school canteen! My kids are both still in the secondary system and the biggest lure when they started was all the amazing snacks and foods available at break and lunch.

Set a budget for your child! My son especially trollied through his lunchtime allowance on all the goodies available at break that weren’t on offer at primary school. Pizza breads, pain au chocolat and MacDonalds style breakfast baps. Pack a back up snack pack-even if they are insistent they want school dinners. After the first year 7 only days they are quite often faced with long queues at the start of September at break especially where it might not leave them enough time to get to the toilet and refill water bottles. Most secondary schools also have designated toilets just for year 7 students and buddy systems in place. 2. They will be very tired-sensory overload of a new classroom, new routines, new subject and new teachers, new friends. Don’t plan too much in the early weeks and expect that at half term they will be exhausted. Help them get ready the night before, books PE kit etc. sign up for a locker asap! 3.Digital homework-not all schools have physical homework diaries anymore but online homework portals like firefly and Microsoft teams. Tasks are usually avaialable for parents to see what has been set and an online diary. Get used to checking in on the platform your school uses each day. Worried?! Talk to your child’s form tutor whenever you need to. Most schools are now encouraging home school contact unlike in the past. 4.Bugs! New school, new group of germs! Brace yourself for coughs and colds in The first term-the germ pool has just got bigger and with new bugs! Shove a pack of tissues and hand sanitizer in their school bag when they aren’t looking! 5.Rain. Your child will not wear their coat or will lose it and their rucksacks are not waterproof. Especially the well known sports brands. Shove a plastic bag in them so whatever is in rucksack doesn’t get soaked!

omg...

The quality of food at DS1'S secondary is so horrific I genuinely worried he was going to get scurvy. Straight onto packed lunches for him, which he makes himself.

Don't worry if they flounder socially in Y7. So many of them seem to go through it.

Oh my word, I have a Y7 girl and a Y10 boy. The stationery observations are spot on!

Mine just lost protractors constantly. We could always find enough pens, rulers, rubbers, etc from general household stocks but not protractors, they slip down the side of the sofa, get lost in bags, get hidden under things.

@anna1969 I am wondering when it become so hard for children to move from primary to secondary school?

When I moved up to high school 40 years ago we had literally no preparation apart from a tour of the school before we applied.

I don't remember being traumatised by the experience and talking to friends, they agree. Is it something about the school system which has changed in this time which makes it more stressful for children?

As a parent I have wondered if by putting so many things in place to "help the transition" we are effectively sending out a message to our children that secondary school is scary and that they won't cope by themselves. DS2 had none of the end of year 6 stuff or much transition help because of Covid and he had no problem settling in. Am I missing something?

DD will just have to not be cool then. Given the cost of uniform I’m labelled the lot!

Primary school has no uniform so it’s a shock when looking at prices and trying to find school shoes!

School uniform is definitely labelled by many! That's how DD was able to swap back her pe skort when they all managed to bring home each others... they all had name tags.

I think technology has made it worse. I hope they ban mobiles properly. Even though they aren't meant to use them they take photos of each other, videos etc. Schools struggle to do anything as it's uploaded onto private social media channels.

Other than that I can't see a significant difference.

Don't let your kid join a whole year group WhatsApp group.

I think we baby primary children much more than we used to. I'm not saying there are not good reasons for it.

In my last year at primary the girls who were in what is now year 7 got on a bus (regular bus not a school bus) from school, came to our primary (that they were in the year before) got the girls from what is now year 6, took us to the school and showed us around.

It was a girls' school so the boys did something similar but their school was closer so no bus.

Can you imagine doing that nowadays?

We bought cardboard magazine holders from IKEA and labelled them Monday to Friday.

When they empty out their books from their bags at the end of the day, get them to check when they next have that lesson. Say, English may be on Monday and then Wednesday. They then put all their English books in the Wednesday magazine holder.

It makes packing for the next day easier and saves hunting down loads of books or worrying whether they've handed them in for marking.

I had twin daughters at different schools so we needed to be very organised, especially in year 7.

Protractors seem to have a special ability to snap themselves into pieces without any help whatsoever - or at least they do in my son's pencil case! I've found many broken pieces of protractor in his pencil case over the years.

Either that, or they get lost.

If our school is anything to go by school communications will be even more frequent than primary. Check your emails daily.

Maybe not as essential with homework portals but having a reliable printer and paper supply was a big deal.

Also agree with bulk buying writing pads, plastic sleeves to go in binders, pens, little packs of tissues, glue sticks. Go when the supermarkets are doing back to school offers and most importantly HIDE it all and ration stuff out on request.

Get them to set their own habits that work for them. Eg tie goes in blazer pocket as soon as it's removed. Lunch box is emptied and out in dishwasher. No clean box, no lunch.

Teach them how to do own laundry. Five shirts, two jumpers, 2 bottoms and a 12 pack of socks. Even if they're scrabbling for the quick wash and tumble dryer at 9pm, it's better than it being your problem. Same for PE kit.

Yes, hide that protractor stash. But remember where you put them.

Do the still "consume" glue sticks in such amounts as they do in primary? My son uses like 3 glues per term.

IF you can afford it...

Start putting some money aside for school trips if you think they might fancy the Geography trip to Iceland or the Ski trip or the water sports trip or the Theatre trip... these trips can be hundreds.

DD was very keen on the "cheap" option of £600 to Cornwall. We didn't have long to pay the deposit of £150. Other trips on offer have been nearer £2k!

@Scissorsisters

Go when the supermarkets are doing back to school offers and most importantly HIDE it all and ration stuff out on request.

like with sweets lol

Teach them how to pack their bag the night before. Kids who pack their bag in the morning leave stuff behind in the rush. First couple of weeks I sat with DS in the evening reading out his timetable while he got the stuff together.

We also had a list next to the front door as a last minute check: house key, locker key, phone, bus tickets, lunch, water bottle.

If you can afford separate equipment for at home to at school - e.g. calculator, pens, ruler, then this is helpful because then they don't forget to bring their calculator as they were using it for homework, because it never left their bag.

Thank you

As a parent I have wondered if by putting so many things in place to "help the transition" we are effectively sending out a message to our children that secondary school is scary and that they won't cope by themselves.

I've wondered that. In my day, secondary school was just the next thing you did after primary school, and you went and did it. No preparations or transitions.

Of course, schools tended to be smaller then - my secondary school was 600 pupils. But I went from a very small primary, so it was still quite a big change.

I agree that everything ready the night before is probably the best advice. It's a habit I've followed throughout my working life.

Also, bus pass, house keys, other frequently used essentials, have a designated pocket in the bag and are put back in there as soon as they are finished with, not just dropped somewhere as they come in the door. Saves so much faffing.

Oh yes I've had this problem with my Y6 child.
Had a very serious e-mail from the schools head teacher the night (10 pm) before the children went back to school after the xmas holidays. Apparently there was a Y6 WhatsApp group where child had been threatened and bullied over the holidays in this group and my DD would be spoken to the next day. Needless to say I was horrified! I asked her as she assured me she wasn't in a group and that she knew nothing about it I warned her if this was not the truth there would be consequences, I immediately checked her phone and saw that she had been sent a request to join the group but had not accepted and as I went into the group 450 messages came in I scrolled through to make sure I didn't see her name.
The next morning at 8:00 I had a call from the school apologising on behalf of the head teacher as my child was not involved it was another child of the same name in her class. Luckily I wasn't one of those parents who ae quick to punish smh. She has now been warned in no uncertain terms she is not to join any WhatsApp groups, lets see if it lasts through secondary school.

The thing is, you can have all these good ideas for filing, getting things ready the night before, always putting keys back in the bag etc but if your DCs just won't do it you can't force them. I bought magazine boxes, all sorts of filing stuff, those keyrings with a springy thing to clip to their bags, they wouldn't use any of it and made their way through their secondary years in a glorious muddle of stuff all over the house. Similarly I would have preferred them to do their homework after school instead of later in the evening but they just couldn't concentrate then and were both better working late into the evening (often after having been out doing sport, or squeezed between dinner and sport). There was the odd moment when something couldn't be found or homework was finished on the bus but with the help of the backup stationery stash and spare school ties on the whole they got away with it.

You only wash it at half term???

I guess it depends on how elaborate is the PE outfit. We have on the list apart from school shoes regular trainers, then rugby/football boots, shin covers, long socks. Short PE top and bottom, long PE tracksuit top and bottom, jaw gum protection. No way to carry it all around.