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!

I went to secondary school 42 years ago this autumn. From a primary school of 60 kids to a secondary school of 2000. I'd only ever been into the building once. The first day was just about ok - first year and 6th form only. The test was an overwhelming, confusing nightmare. It took me months to settle.

No Smiggle for my Y7 DD. She told me it was social death to turn up at secondary school with anything 'so Y6' 😬

Absolutely. Me too

@TupperwareHoarder

If the school is like ours and has rule requiring coats to be in bags

that sounds insane. The bag would need to be huge.

Interesting that Smiggle is now not cool! The general principle still applies tho :)

If a school is asking for dc to bring crayons and highlighters, I would be amazed if this were checked. It might be nice to have but highlighters are not needed on a daily - and for many dc it’s a good thing if they are in school, in uniform with a pen - so I wouldn’t stress too much about matching crayons.

Crayons aren’t used but we use highlighters a lot especially in English when where are colour coding different methods and examples in worksheets and text extracts. I do have some from Poundland but they get nicked!! Some students have immaculate sets of everything and some as stated earlier a half chewed up biro inner! We don’t sanction for no highlighters but I know some schools do!

@anna1969 I was surprised but they did request set of crayons in the school where is my son heading

Lockers may be too far away to access between lessons, or too small to hold more than a few books, never mind a coat or PE bag. Take a large enough rucksack just in case.

Almost all the girls in our town seem to just have an A4 size, black handbag for school, it puzzles me where all their stuff is but I thought maybe it's all online? Interesting to know that other kids have heavy bags like we used to.

I like the transition days they have now, I was so lost and confused for my first few weeks at my secondary school. It's a big shock going from a small village primary to a large (wouldn't be considered large by today's standards) secondary and it was a massive adjustment in many ways.

If they have an induction day, write down contact information (email/mobile) number on a small piece of paper or card that they can give to new classmates so they can potentially meet up over the summer. The girl DD2 befriended on Induction Day is still her best friend 12 years later - they messaged all over the summer which was a massive bonus once they started for real.

As someone else has said, have a contingency plan for if school has to close suddenly. My DDs attended my school so on my work days, it was obvious to them what to do. However, on my non-working days, we needed plans for what to do. Make sure that they can always contact a parent, grandparent or other trusted adult - does their phone have enough credit and the numbers stored or known?

If they need to use public transport, do the journey with them before they do it for real. Remember that if you get off the bus on the same side of the road as school, you need to get on the bus home on the side away from school. Almost every year we have kids in tears because they haven't realised they need to cross the road, and have missed the bus.

Some schools do have draconian systems, but most of them don't want to trick new y7s, so if they aren't sure, suggest that they ask their form tutor. Make sure that they know their manners - please and thank you seem remarkably lacking with lots of y7/8 students. Basic manners are free and go a long way.

I went from a primary school with 50 students to a secondary school with 1200 in the 80s and it was amazing after such a claustrophobic primary school experience. We were given maps and had the building and room numbering system explained then left to it, it felt so grown up and liberating. I can imagine it could be a shock to the system for some though. I think things were a lot simpler in many ways though back then. They certainly weren't strict about uniform or stationery or PE kit.

Start saving £x a month for trips into a separate account from primary age. Really useful for expensive secondary school trips

There certainly seems to be a lot more effort put into the transition and alongside that a fair amount of emphasis placed on the stress and anxiety children will almost certainly feel as they move into Y7. I don’t remember feeling like that during my last year in Primary either (early 1990s). I also had just one short visit prior to starting my new school.

DD starts secondary in September and the school has already organised two transition evenings, a transition coffee morning (for parents to raise concerns about anything discussed during the transition evenings…) and there is a borough wide transition day during which every year 6 child will spend the day at their new school. Then in August she is attending a week long Summer School at the secondary to prep for the start in September. We’ve already been isssued with the school handbook and I find all the different rules and infractions that lead to a detention mind boggling. I feel old!

I think post COVID we are more anxious and parents tend to be more hands on than mine were in the 1980’s! We have a huge number of school refusers due to anxiety and speaking to colleagues nationally this is the biggest impact of COVID.. In many cases this has not been clinically diagnosed by medics ( Please don’t shoot me down - that is a whole other COVID caused/NHS debate!) I’m hoping anxiety will drop as the COVID years get further away…

Ha ha!! Spot on!

I’m one of those who only washes their blazers on half terms. Put the blazer in a net bag, cool wash and then dry on a hanger. It’s not worth of my life to make them empty their pockets any more often than that.

Another tip that I haven’t seen is that do not buy velcro fastened school shoes, these are a social death. I guess this is more applicable to boys though as girls can wear ballerinas etc too.

I don't think all schools do masses for transition. A lot of the ones round here just do the standard borough transition day where all the kids spend the day at the secondary. But not lots of evenings or a summer school.

We've got

• an evening meeting for parents
• 2 transition days
• they start a day earlier than Yrs 8-10 (yr11 also in that day)

Groups from the various feeder primary schools are also coming together for a performance at the secondary one evening but thats not really part of transition.

The main thing I would suggest having read this thread, is that realise that "all schools do it differently". The advice in the OP is fairly generic. A lot of the other posters have made comments about things that may not be applicable in your school. This is both the unwritten "rules" as well as the actual ones (e.g. if Smiggle is a "thing" or not!). Don't go out and buy things solely as a result of this thread!

I'd suggest a local FB group or parents WhatsApp (there will be some with older children) or you may already know a parent with a child at the school, to get actual information about your school.

My DC's school have an optional summer school that they offer up to children with SEN and pupil premium children first and then others on request. They then have a "Year 7 only" first day. That's all the transition before they are fully into the normal timetable.

NOOO what HELL is this, faints 🤦‍♀️as I try to figure out how I would change the timetable on our science system every half term. As once a year is bad enough.

I now feel very sorry for the admin staff at your child's school.

@MigGirl don't worry, Science is fixed!

For example, one rotation is Textiles, Food and DT. Another is Art, Photography and Reading. And then there's Drama, Art and Music. Just one term of each. Its not as terrifying as it sounds.

Although Sets can change each term as well.

You would hate DD's school. There are 2 different sets of subjects that are on rotations through the year. There are 3 subjects in one set and 4 in the other, so they they change at different times to each other, and none of the times align with term ends :)

I think DD’s school does a rotation thing as well. I don’t know why they can’t do a full term of subject X followed by a full term of subject Y rather than changing it every couple of weeks. They also mentioned weekly challenge tests in Maths and Reading and other processes that are completely new to me as a mum who finished her secondary school education almost 30 years ago. Interesting that there is a lot of variation in what schools do in terms of transitions. Speaking to other parents I’ve discovered that DD’s school is one of a very few doing the summer school week in this borough. They also have a dedicated SEN pupil transition week which again not all schools in the borough have organised. I’m honestly impressed schools with 1,000+ kids keep on top of all of this.

One thing I’m not doing is joining any parent WhatsApp groups. The ones at DD’s primary schools have been full of so much drama. Perhaps secondary is different as the parents are less involved with the kids day to day but I’m not taking the chance😂

>The ones at DD’s primary schools have been full of so much drama.

zero drama in our class What's App. All useful reminders, information and a bit of fun and jokes. I want some drama, that would be interesting!!:)))

@WhataPithy

Another tip that I haven’t seen is that do not buy velcro fastened school shoes, these are a social death.

That's not a tip. It's common sense!!

I'm with you there, and I was a teacher.

THere is no need for it, you can change a timetable at half term or another holiday. That's what they did in my day (when dinosaurs roamed the earth).

@MigGirl it isn't that bad and it isn't all subjects but for science you could do a science over a term, three terms so one of biology, chemistry and one of physics. From the teacher's point of view you teach one science to three different groups of students. If you have the right staff that means you have staff only teaching their specialism.

Re equipment / pencil cases. Lots of schools have either a check at the start of the day or children have to show they have equipment at the start of all lessons.