Pamela Greenhough, Martin Hughes, Jane Andrews, Harvey Goldstein, Elizabeth Mcness, Marilyn
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What effect does involving parents in knowledge exchange activities during transfer from Key Stage 2 to Key Stage 3 have on children’s attainment and learning dispositions?
Pamela Greenhough, Martin Hughes, Jane Andrews, Harvey Goldstein, Elizabeth McNess, Marilyn Osborn, Andrew Pollard, Vicki Stinchcombe, and Wan Ching Yee
(All authors are based at the University of Bristol with the exception of Jane Andrews who is at the University of the West of England and Andrew Pollard who is at the IOE, University of London.)
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Institute of Education, University of London, 5-8 September 2007
Contact
Email: [email protected]
By Post: Dr Pamela Greenhough GSOE University of Bristol 35, Berkeley Square BRISTOL BS8 1JA
Acknowledgements The Home School Knowledge Exchange (HSKE) Project was funded by the ESRC (reference number L139 25 1078) and is part of its Teaching and Learning Research Programme. We are very grateful to the children, parents and teachers who participated in the project and to the LEAs of Cardiff and Bristol for their support.
The HSKE project team consisted of: Martin Hughes (project director), Jane Andrews, Anthony Feiler, Pamela Greenhough, David Johnson, Elizabeth McNess, Marilyn Osborn, Andrew Pollard, Mary Scanlan, Leida Salway, Vicki Stinchcombe, Jan Winter and Wan Ching Yee. Project consultants were John Bastiani, Guy Claxton and Harvey Goldstein
THIS IS A DRAFT. PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF THE FIRST AUTHOR.
1 Introduction The Home School Knowledge Exchange Project explored ways in which progress in children’s attainment and learning dispositions might be brought about through processes of knowledge exchange between school and home and home and school.
During the early stages of preparing the research, members of the project team consulted with staff from the Education Authorities of Bristol and Cardiff to identify specific areas of concern where the proposed work might prove fruitful. Three main areas emerged in these discussions
Literacy learning at Key Stage 1
Numeracy learning at Key Stage 2
Transfer between Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3 and the project subsequently conducted research in each of these areas. This paper reports findings from the transfer strand.
Background
Moving from primary to secondary school can be a difficult time for young people and may be viewed as an ecological transition or disruption (Rudolph et al. 2001). As
Rice (2001) has noted, institutional discontinuities are to be found in the areas of school climate, educational practices and social structures, and students have to
“learn to read, negotiate and adapt to a very different school culture” (Pratt and
George, 2005).
There is research evidence that suggests that the move between institutions may have a negative effect on students, in terms of their attainment, attitudes to learning and psychological functioning. Dips in attainment in the UK have been reported by
Fouracre (1993), Suffolk LEA (1997) and the QCA (Pollitt, 2002). Galton et al.
2 (1999) described a hiatus in learning whereby two in every five pupils failed to make expected progress in the year after changing school. Decline in academic performance post-transition is also reported in many other countries. In the USA, several studies (e.g. Barone et al. (1991), Simmons et al. (1991), Gutman and
Midgeley (2000), Reyes et al. (2000)) have found a decline in students’ grade point average (GPA) after school transfer. Respondents to the INCA1 thematic probe carried out by the NFER for the QCA (Whitby et al., 2006) reported dips in performance in the first year after primary-secondary transfer in Ireland, Italy, Spain and Tasmania. Students’ perceptions of their academic competence have also been found to decline after transfer. Anderman and Midgely (1997) found that perceived competence dropped in maths and English after transition from elementary school. In a Canadian study, Cantin and Boivin (2004) observed an immediate decline in self perception of scholastic competence after transfer, which was accompanied by a slow progressive decline in self esteem.
Evidence for attitudinal decline was found by Galton et al. (2002) where students were found to enjoy school significantly less by the end of the first year after transfer.
Attitudes to science and especially mathematics also declined (Galton et al. 2003).
Barone et al. (1991) observed a drop in school attendance in addition to the decline in
GPA after transfer to high school. Students have also been seen to show an increase in psychological distress across the transition (Chung et al., 1998) although only boys in this study also showed decreased academic achievement.
As this last study indicates, some groups of students appear to be more vulnerable at transition than others. Gender is one factor that appears to have an impact on post-
1 International Review of Curriculum and Assessment Frameworks
3 transition functioning. Duchesne et al. (2005) found that boys were more likely than girls to belong to the group with a declining trajectory post transfer. Barone et al.
(1991) found that females showed less of a decrease in GPA than did males. In other research, it appears that gender may interact with ability. In the Anderman and
Midgeley (1997) study, it was found that while student grades declined somewhat those of higher achieving females increased.
Females in the Barone et al. (1991) research also reported less difficulty with new social environment tasks. In other research relating to the social situation, Pellegrini and Bartini (2000) found that while there was an increase in bullying generally post transfer (see also Espelage et al., 2001), it was more marked for boys than girls and that girls endorsed bullying less than boys. They suggest that bullying is used in the service of establishing dominance and is a strategy used by males to respond to loss of status.
In other research, ethnic heritage has sometimes been identified as a factor that may be related to student vulnerability at transfer. Simmons et al. (1991) found that the decline in grades for African-American students post transfer was greater than for other students - “while everyone’s grades decrease in grade 7, African-American children’s grades plummet”. African-American students also showed a greater decrease in their liking for school. In Scotland, Graham and Hill (2003) found that fewer minority ethnic pupils felt positive about being at secondary school than white pupils.
4 In contrast to the above, however, Seidman et al. (1994) found that the decreases in
GPA and self esteem observed in their study were robust across gender and race/ethnicity.
It appears that the student’s relationship with their family can be important at this time. This may seem somewhat surprising since it is suggested that one of the tasks of adolescence is to establish greater independence in daily life from parents (Simmons et al., 1991). However, a number of studies point to the importance of family support.
Kurita and Janzen (1996), for example, found that parents were important sources of support for early adolescents, providing more tangible support than teachers and friends and more emotional support than teachers. Informational support (help with defining, understanding, and coping with problematic events) from parents significantly predicted esteem post transfer, although the size of the correlation was small. Most children in Graham and Hill’s study (2003) said that they would mainly talk about school related social and emotional problems to parents rather than friends or teachers. Seidman et al. (2003) found that adolescents who perceived fewer daily hassles and more involvement with their families appeared less vulnerable to declines in self esteem. They concluded that ‘it would seem important to educate families as to the normative difficulty of this school transition so they can provide constructive assistance’.
In relation to attainment, Newman et al. (2000) found that continuing high performers after transfer reported receiving more support from their immediate family. They suggested that ‘efforts to support a more successful transition to high school need to include ways of informing family members about the challenges and demands of the
5 high school curriculum’. Anderson et al. (2000) identify the importance of the factors of preparedness for and support during transfer and again underline the potential role of the family amongst others in providing these.
A further call to focus effort on parents as well as children during the transition process comes from a study carried out in Scotland by Zeedyk et al. (2003). They found a degree of similarity between parents’ and students’ views prior to transfer and argue that it ‘seems reasonable to assume that a causal relation may exist between the two; if a parent becomes aware of a child’s concerns they may well come to share them, and vice versa’. However, it should be noted that evidence for the degree of similarity between children’s and parents’ views was based on similar proportions of each group identifying a particular factor rather than the matching of responses. However, in an early study for the Inner London Education Authority
(Alston, 1988), responses were matched and parents’ views (concerning how well their children had settled after transfer) were found to be generally in accord with their children’s observations. This study also noted that school transfer is a period of transition for parents themselves as well as for students. New family routines may need to be put in place and new relationships established with the child’s school.
Transfer to secondary school can also act as a marker for the passing of childhood and as O’Brien (2005) has observed the process can involve ‘ a fine balance of letting go and remaining emotionally available’ on the part of parents (or more specifically in this case, mothers).
Whilst, there is some research, then, which points to the potential importance of the family at the time of transfer, few studies have implemented programmes that have
6 sought to extend support to parents at this time and it is common for the role of parents to be overlooked (Ofsted, 2002). The Home School Knowledge Exchange
Project set up a programme of action aimed at increasing opportunities for parents to be more involved as their children transferred from primary to secondary school. This paper presents a brief description of the activities that were developed and the findings of work carried out to evaluate their impact.
Procedures
The research was carried out in the cities of Bristol and Cardiff. Four primary schools were involved in the action side of the project, two in Bristol and two in Cardiff. In each city, one primary school had a high proportion of students eligible for free school meals while the other primary school had a low proportion of eligible students.
The major receiving secondary school for each action primary school was also recruited to the research.
During the first year, the emphasis was on building relationships with and between parties and on identifying areas where home-school links could be strengthened and the role of parents could be developed. This work included a series of interviews with students and their parents as they moved through transfer. During the subsequent year, activities were conducted with the new cohort of Year 6 students (10-11 year olds) and their families, which built on the work of the previous period. Action was implemented with this set of students both prior to transfer, and, where they transferred to the selected destination school, post transfer as well, since transfer was seen as encompassing the period of assimilation and accommodation during Year 7, as well as the move from one school to another.
7 Students from four primary comparison schools were also involved in the research.
The comparison schools were identified as being similar to the action primary schools based on advice from the local education authority (LEA) staff. Again in each city, one comparison primary school had a low proportion of students eligible for free school meals while the other school had a high proportion. Students from these schools were assessed on the same instruments as students from the action schools but did not take part in the knowledge exchange activities. Both sets of students (action and comparison) were tested prior to transfer using the PIPS2 End of Year 6 assessments of verbal and non-verbal intelligence and literacy and mathematics attainment. All these students were assessed again after transfer to their new schools, mostly towards the end of the Spring term. Preliminary analysis of the pre-transfer scores indicated that whilst no child was at ceiling, a number were close. After transfer, therefore, the End of Year 6 tests were supplemented with additional material from CEM which was developed for older students but compatible with the Pips materials. The assessment of higher achieving students was not, therefore, unduly restricted or capped. Internal reliability levels for the combined sections were acceptable (Cronbach’s alpha >.9 for both literacy and mathematics).
Changes to students' learning dispositions were monitored through the administration of the full version of the Effective Lifelong Learning Inventory (ELLI) before and after transfer. Seven factors were involved: A Changing and Learning, B Critical
Curiosity, C Meaning Making, D Creativity, E Strategic Awareness, F Learning
2 The Primary Indicators of Performance (PIPS) are available from the Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre (CEM), Durham University. The scores on the tests were originally processed by CEM. However, examination of the processing indicated a level of error and discrepancy that was unacceptable to the HSKE team. The scripts were, therefore, reprocessed in-house using objective procedures that maintained blindness as to membership of an action or comparison group.
8 Relationships, and G Fragility and Dependence. We also assessed student attitudes and acclimatisation to life in their new schools using a questionnaire devised by the project. After transfer, particularly in Bristol, students were widely dispersed, with the result that this phase of testing entailed making arrangements with and visiting a large number of secondary schools, (16 in Bristol, 12 in Cardiff).
A small number of students from each primary action school and their families were followed more closely through transfer. A process of stratified random assignment was used to select these target students (giving a higher, medium and lower attaining boy and girl in each action school3). The parents and students were interviewed before and after transfer. This allowed us to explore the participants’ feelings about transfer and change and the development of these over time. The students' primary teachers were interviewed prior to transfer and the children were observed in their primary schools. Their tutors and secondary maths and English teachers were interviewed post transfer. Amongst other things, the interviews with the target students, their parents and their teachers provided a window on the knowledge exchange activities and how they were received. The students were also observed on the first day in their new school.
More extended and detailed work was carried out with 8 cases selected from amongst the target students. These families were visited more frequently both before and after transfer and the case students were observed in English and/or maths lessons in the secondary school.
3 In fact, a number of additional students were included as targets in Bristol to reflect the more varied transfer paths in the city. Number of target students in Bristol = 16, number of target students in Cardiff = 12.
9 Activities
A teacher was seconded part-time to work with school staff to develop the knowledge exchange activities. The detailed format of these activities varied across each primary- secondary pairing, depending on the affordances and constraints present in the different schools. The actions were all designed, however, to address similar underpinning features, particularly relating to the themes of preparation, support and relationships.
Examples of activities
Videos were made about life in the receiving secondary schools and reproduced on tape or CD. A variety of different voices was included on these - teachers, other secondary school staff, current Year 7 students and their parents. However, the mix of voices and contents varied across schools. They included Year 7 students explaining rules, routines and other features that were new to them like Smart Cards. They talked about the advantages of the secondary school as they perceived them and they gave advice on aspects like homework. In one case, a student unpacked her bag to show the things she needed to remember each day. They spoke of their own initial fears when they started and how these were resolved.
‘I was worried about getting lost but I just asked and people helped’
‘If you do get lost you just go to the bottom hall and someone is there to
help you’
They discussed issues like bullying and gave advice about the help that was available if things go wrong. Different members of staff like tutors, a head of year, an Ethnic
Minority Achievement Service (EMAS) support worker, a learning mentor and a
10 director of achievement talked about their different roles and how they could be contacted. A cook explained the options that were available for lunch. She talked about the system of lunch passes for children receiving free school dinners. Some parents of Year 7 students gave advice and explained things from their perspective
‘Our morning routine has changed. She gets up and has her breakfast – we get everything ready the night before– and then I leave the house before her now.’
A Key Stage 3 head explained about the reward postcard scheme operating in that school to communicate successes to parents.
The target audience for the videos included both the current Year 6 students and their parents. The occasions for showing the videos reflected this duality and were selected to make them available to both students and parents. For example, one primary school included the video in its leavers concert, an occasion that was traditionally well attended by parents. The same video was also played during a pre-transfer parents’ evening held at the secondary school, which was attended by parents and children. In another primary school, parents were invited into school to view the video at either an afternoon or evening viewing. Two translators (Somali and Urdu/Punjabi speaking) were present at the afternoon showing. In this school, students watched the video separately during a class session.
As Measor (2005) has observed, two kinds of advice and information may be helpful to parents – firstly, concerning the nature of the forthcoming transition itself and secondly, concerning ways of supporting their children through this period. These aspects are clearly linked since the more knowledgeable parents are about life post transfer, the more likely it is that they will be able to act in ways that are helpful to
11 their children. Some of the activities developed by the project went further than simply presenting parents with information and sought to give them opportunities to consider the implications of the material regarding ways of providing support. For example, in one school a pre-transfer presentation by the upcoming head of Year 7 was followed by a session in which parents divided into small groups and discussed what their children were likely to find different after transfer and how they could be helped to deal with these aspects. Parents were encouraged to build on their own extensive knowledge of their child and to reflect on other occasions where they had been faced with change. Each group also contained at least one parent who already had a child at the secondary school who could give an experienced perspective on the transition. The plenary session in which the groups fed back some of the issues they had identified and their suggestions for handling them was very supportive and the parents came to recognise that they could act as a resource for each other. (Appendix
1 shows a quotation from the mother of a target child, who attended the meeting.)
Similar opportunities for awareness raising were made available in another school through a Circle Time session for parents (Cowling and Vine, 2005) where parents also shared their feelings about transfer and discussed a fictional scenario.
It was hoped that these activities would increase the parents’ sense of agency. This was also the case for some student activities where they were asked not simply to act as an audience for information being imparted but were required to process it as well.
After watching the video, some Year 6 students made ‘Top Tips’ booklets for themselves. During this activity they had to identify the skills they would need in secondary school, reflect on themselves as an individual, imagine themselves in their new setting and offer themselves ‘advice’. Examples included:-
12 Be yourself – People probably like you better if you act normal
Don’t try to be like anyone else. Nobody is better than you.
Ask for help if you need it
It’s good to ask questions in class
Don’t rise to silly comments
Look on the bright side
Parents were subsequently invited to contribute a tip for their child to add to the booklet.
Many secondary schools hold meetings for parents prior to transfer but our interviews carried out with parents during the first year of the project indicated that parents felt that the meetings they had attended were too large and too formal. In addition, they felt that parents’ evenings in the secondary schools occurred too late in the year for issues around transfer to be addressed. A number of smaller more informal events were, therefore, organised for the action cohort. One secondary school, for example held a small informal tea for parents at the end of the day on which their children visited the school prior to transfer. This was followed after transfer by a number of small-scale informal meetings (with refreshments) in the first half of the Autumn term, which were attended by parents, students, their tutors, the head of year, the head of KS 3 and the chair of the PTA who was also a governor. These meetings allowed parents to start building relationships with key people at the school, talk about how their children were settling and raise any concerns early on.
One of the tasks facing students at transfer is that of getting to know and becoming known by the people in the new environment. As Summerfield (1986) has observed -
13 from being the oldest and best known, ‘these children become the youngest, least knowing and least known members of the community’ (p11). Further activities post transfer were designed to create circumstances in which children and their families could become better known at their secondary school. In one school, children were given disposable cameras to take photographs of their out-of-school lives over the summer holidays. These were then used within school to explore understandings about learning and were turned into a major display, which parents were invited to visit. (See Stinchcombe (2004) for further details about this activity.)
Analyses and findings
In this paper, we focus on reporting the results from the quantitative analyses of the attainment, disposition and acclimatisation data. (See Hughes et al. 2006 and Osborn et al. 2006 for more detailed accounts of findings based on qualitative analyses. There is also a DVD available from the project4 that looks at the issues surrounding transfer and their negotiation, through drama.)
Attainment
Analyses were conducted to establish whether the knowledge exchange activities appeared to have impacted on students’ attainment in literacy and mathematics.
These data were modelled using multi level modelling software (MLwiN version
2.02). A two-level model was employed based on individual secondary school ID and individual student ID5. The post-transfer literacy and post-transfer maths scores were the respective dependent variables.
4 Ready or Not? Using drama to support transfer from primary to secondary school. Produced by Focus Productions in collaboration with Theatr Iolo and the HSKE Project, 2007. 5 Individual primary school was also included in the model but found not to make a difference and was removed.
14 In many LEAs , the relationship between primary ‘feeder’ schools and secondary
‘receiver’ schools is of a ‘several to several’ form. Children from a particular primary school will transfer to a variety of secondary schools and a particular secondary school will receive students from a variety of primary schools. The impact of this complex pattern of relationships at transfer will be examined further in the discussion.
At this point, our concern is with the implications of this patterning for our analyses of the data since ‘several to several’ pathways were present in both cities. Inevitably, there were students from the action primary schools who transferred to schools other than the designated action secondary school. Although less frequent, there were also students who transferred from a comparison primary school to an action secondary school6. It can be seen then that students might have participated in pre-transfer activities only, post-transfer activities only, both pre and post-transfer activities or no activities at all. A four level categorical variable was, therefore, created that represented these profiles and was used to differentiate groups.
Analyses showed that students who attended a school where HSKE activities had taken place (primary, secondary, or both) made significantly greater progress in literacy from Y6 to Y7 compared to students who had not. (See Appendix 2.) There was no effect for city, proportion of free school meals, gender or ethnic heritage7, and no significant interactions between the main effect and any of these factors. Table 1 shows the mean scores for literacy before and after transfer.
6 ‘Catchment’ boundaries were redrawn in Bristol soon after the start of the project resulting in changes to expected destination schools. 7 This was the case for African/African-Caribbean heritage but cell sizes were rather low. Even lower cell sizes meant that it was not possible to explore the effect for other ethnic heritage groups.
15 Table 1: Literacy scores Attendance at action Pre transfer Post transfer school score score Mean SD Mean SD Primary and 66.59 19.27 83.47 23.79 secondary Primary 70.19 19.79 86.62 21.87 Secondary 58.04 17.35 74.00 21.07 Neither 70.87 18.65 82.75 23.57
The pattern of results for mathematics was similar but not statistically significant.
Attitudes and acclimatisation
These scores were analysed non-parametrically due to the nature of the data. In some respects, students who attended an action primary school appeared to adjust more quickly to secondary school, compared with students who had not. These students scored significantly more positively on the question ‘Before you started did you know what to expect?’, and on questions concerned with how quickly they found their way around and how quickly they got used to other students8. Surprisingly, the action students also reported getting a detention or punishment significantly more quickly than the comparison students. The median for action students was a month whereas the median for comparison students was a term.
Learning dispositions
In general, the scores for the learning disposition factors fell from Year 6 to Year 7, with this fall reaching significance for Critical Curiosity, Meaning Making,
Creativity, and Strategic Awareness9. The fall was, however, less among those students who attended action primary schools, with the effect reaching significance
8 All these comparisons based on Mann-Whitney tests. These results should be treated with caution on account of the number of tests carried out and the increased likelihood of significance being achieved through chance. 9 Wicoxon signed rank test
16 for Learning Relationships10, where in fact there was a small rise for the action students (see Table 2).
Table 2: Factor - Learning Relationships Pre transfer Post transfer score score Mean SD Mean SD Action 2.88 0.53 2.93 0.45 Comparison 2.95 0.43 2.86 0.47
Discussion
Galton et al. (1999) suggested in their review that most transfer activities and research till then had focussed on the personal and social effects of transfer rather than considering the impact of these on academic progress. They also suggest that transfer is a less stressful experience now than it was 20 years ago but observe that schools continue putting energy and money into efforts smoothing the transfer process, with the implication being that effort would be better focussed on aspects like pedagogy, teaching and learning strategies, and curriculum discontinuity. Our findings suggest that interventions that are concerned with personal, social and emotional areas can have an impact on attainment and academic progress. They would also seem to indicate that despite changes to the transfer process over the years, there is still room for development in the personal, social and emotional areas and that interventions here can prove to be beneficial. It is also gratifying to note that our findings were also robust for ‘at risk’ groups and in particular were not differentiated by gender.
We conceptualised transfer as not just the time immediately surrounding the move from primary school to secondary but also as stretching into Year 7. It is interesting, then, that the findings of comparatively higher attainment in literacy were found also
10 Mann-Whitney test on the difference scores
17 to apply to the group of students who attended action secondary schools only (i.e. did not attend action primary schools). This would suggest support for the continuation of home-school knowledge exchange activities during the post transfer period in the secondary school.
Whilst the decline in learning dispositions after transfer is in line with other research, it is disappointing to see. The learning disposition factor that showed a significant differentiation between the action and comparison students, Learning Relationships, is interesting as it is perhaps the aspect most directly related to the intervention, with a number of questions referring to the family. However, questions relating to the role of friends in learning also contributed to this factor and it is possible that the findings indicate that the knowledge exchange activities may have had an impact on friendships. Cantin and Boivin (2004) have observed that 61% of peer ties were no longer maintained after transfer in their study. Our acclimatisation results indicated that action students reported taking less time to get used to the other students and feel confident with them, which might operate as an important factor in a period of flux in peer relationships, of the kind noted above. The importance of friends in the time after transfer has been well documented by Measor and Woods (1984), and Demetriou et al. (2000) have also drawn attention to a potential relationship between friendships and student progress.
Whilst the acclimatisation data showed students from action primary schools finding their feet more quickly in some respects, they also appear to have received punishments or detentions sooner than students from comparison schools. This somewhat surprising observation may indicate that staff in secondary schools may
18 expect to experience a shorter ‘honeymoon’ period where students are less daunted by the transfer experience.
Whilst our findings lend support to the adoption of knowledge exchange activities by schools, we should recognise that they make additional demands of teachers, particularly in respect to time, as schedules suited to parents are likely to fall outside the school day. The teachers we interviewed after the project appeared not to begrudge the time since they recognised the activities as valuable. For example:
Int: The coffee afternoon and things like that, how did you feel about that? T: More than happy to help out in that sort of.. anything like that, if it makes the.. because in the long run those sort of things make your job easier, if you know who the parents are and they know who you are, if you do need to contact parents you’re not just a name then, they know who you are. And normally the children are more likely to approach you as well because of that.
However, such contributions need to be recognised and the teacher’s working day may need to be viewed and structured differently (see Hancock, 1998) in order to balance workloads. This is likely to carry financial implications and it is likely that additional investment will be required if the potential of home-school knowledge exchange is to be realised.
In this study, we did not impose the activities on the schools but worked with each school to develop activities most suited to their particular circumstances. This allowed the schools a level of ownership of the initiative. We have become increasingly aware that in this kind of work it is not a case of ‘one size fits all’. Individual schools need to develop actions that they feel are appropriate to them. Similarly, parents may choose to participate in some activities but not others. A mother with an older child already at the secondary school, for example, chose not to attend the informal tea as she felt she
19 already knew the teachers. It is a shortcoming in the design of the project that we were not able to similarly tailor the content of the knowledge exchange activities to suit the transfer destination of each and every child in the primary action classes. The videos made by the secondary schools, for example, were specific to those particular schools and whilst they contained some generic advice about transfer, some aspects were not precisely relevant to the minority of children who transferred to different secondary schools. In terms of targeted preparation, then, more could have been done here. However, since the quantitative results were seen to apply to this set of children as well, it would appear that the generalised activities, that encouraged discussion and thoughtful engagement with ideas around transfer, like preparing a Top Tips booklet, were of value.
A number of factors made it prohibitive for the project to set up wholly individually tailored exchange activities. These included cost, the amount of organisation involved, children transferring to the private sector and the fact that the transfer destinations for some children were not known until very late in the day. In one of our cases where the family appealed, the destination secondary school was finally decided during the summer vacation. This pattern of difficulties is also the reality faced by schools as they attempt to develop transfer initiatives and set up liaison activities in a context characterised by ‘many to many’ transfer pathways. It is an unhelpful situation which has been exacerbated by the extension of parental choice in this area.
The greatest research attention to the role of parents at transfer has been in the context of parental choice in regards to secondary schools. Our research indicates that parents can also have an important role to play in supporting their children at this time. Where
20 parents are involved in the process, and knowledge is exchanged between school and home, and home and school, students may be better able to manage the discontinuities they face with the benefits extending to academic progress as well as social and emotional aspects.
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25 Appendix 1
Excerpt from post-transfer interview with the mother of a target student
Int: And what did you think of the evening?
Mum: Fine. Yes, I think it was quite a good idea, I came out feeling a little bit happier about some things. Possibly more worried about other issues that I hadn’t thought of. No, on the whole I thought it was a good opportunity for us to make use of some parents who had already been through the first year and what to expect from the school and our children. The Head of Year was very informative and very open and we were able to ask her questions… I think we all had the same worries, our children were worried about the size of the school and I think we were worried about the bullying aspect and how it would be dealt with and how we would deal with it, and whether they would be in the same class as their friends and if they weren’t how would you be able to help your child to settle in as a result and we thought they would settle in. Getting into the wrong crowd of people…
Int: And were there any other impacts as a result of the meeting, any other outcomes or anything like that?
Mum: Er.. I think us as parents who were there talked a little bit more about it sort of outside of school and things and said that we’d all get together 6 weeks after they started and sort of see what the problems were. But we never did (laughs). So whether that meant that they weren’t having any problems, I don’t know…
Int: And do you think it would be worth doing it again next year?
Mum: Definitely. Yes, in a way I felt quite privileged that we got involved in it, because it gave me some sort of insider information before other parents really, or in addition to other parents, I suppose.
26 Appendix 2
Indicative output from the analyses for literacy
Y7rd@xtn: Year 7 scores including extensions Y6read: Year 6 scores ageprerd: Age at time of pre-transfer testing actcfpsb: Attendance at an action school _0 both primary and secondary (compared with non-action) _1 just primary (compared with non-action) _2 just secondary (compared with non-action)
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