CHAPTER 1 Transition:why is there an issue?

1 IntroductionAnyone walking into an English primary school over the past decadewould be forgiven for thinking that the learning needs of 5- and 6-year oldlearners in this country are very di!erent. While Reception children are tobe found engaged in playful and active learning indoors and outdoors ,Year1 children are frequently found sitting passively on carpets listening to theexposition of their teachers. While Reception children are following theirown interests and preoccupations ,the 6-year-olds are following careful anddetailed planning which is concerned with the teachers intended out-comes and not their own. Why is this the case? What evidence is there thatchildren in Reception the year they become 5 ,need something so palpa-bly di!erent from those in Year 1 the year they become 6?The reality is that it is not the needs of children that have driven thewedge between Reception and Year 1 practice ,but rather successive gov-ernment initiatives that have at their heart conRicting beliefs aboute!

2 Ective learning and teaching for children who are 5 and 6 years old. Inactual fact ,it is my belief that government minsters have not particularlythought about the needs of Year 1 at all. Successive initiatives introducedinto primary schools over recent years have ignored the fact that the wayin which children learn in Key Stage 1 is developmentally very di!erentfrom the way in which they learn in Key Stage 2. there were good reasonswhy the education system in this country used to separate children ininfant and junior schools. Children s ways of learning alter signiQcantlyonce they reach the start of Key Stage 2 as they become increasingly capable of learning in more abstract and teacher-focused ways. But the primary-itization of English schooling has meant that initiatives suitable4 Transition: why isthere an issue? CHAPTER119319_CH01 7/1/10 10:51 am Page 4for Key Stage 2 are indiscriminately applied to Key Stage 1 withoutsufficient (or sufficiently knowledgeable) consideration being given towhether they are suitable for younger primary order to decide what is truly appropriate for learners of this age ,it isimportant to consider what has inRuenced the very di!

3 Ering practices inReception and Year 1 classes and then examine this alongside what isknown about the learning needs of 5- and 6-year-old introduction of the Foundation StageIn 2000 ,the English government introduced a new distinct phase of edu-cation called the Foundation Stage ,for children age 3 to the end of theReception year (the year children become 5). The introduction of theFoundation Stage was accompanied by the Qrst national guidance for thoseteaching this age group. Entitled Curriculum Guidance for the FoundationStage(DfES 2000) ,this document set out some key principles about theway young children should learn and the role of adults in supporting thislearning. It also established goals for learning that most children shouldachieve by the end of their Reception well as setting down standards for the quality of the curriculum ,theintroduction of the Foundation Stage also had an impact on the teacherswho were to be responsible for its implementation.

4 Up until this point,Reception class teachers in schools had sometimes felt pulled between apillar and a post. While being aware that their children were very youngand needed learning experiences similar to those in nursery schools andclasses ,they were often seen as the Qrst class of the primary school and,therefore ,expected to introduce more formal and certainly more teacher-directed approaches. But the introduction of the Foundation Stage broughtReception teachers Qrmly o!the fence and established that they were todeliver a play-based curriculum with substantial amounts of child-initiatedlearning ,and that their role was to facilitate and support learning ratherthan to direct introduction of the Literacy and Numeracy StrategiesAt around the same time that Reception teachers were embracing a morechild-centred way of teaching ,their Year 1 colleagues were being moved inthe opposite direction. In 1998 and 1999 ,for the Qrst time national guid-ance was introduced not just about whatchildren of primary age should5 Transition:why is there an issue?

5 19319_CH01 7/1/10 10:51 am Page 5learn (the National Curriculum had established this in 1989) but howtheyshould learn it. The National Literacy Strategy(DfEE 1998 ) followed by TheNational Numeracy Strategy(DfEE 1999) documents both laid down amodel by which teachers were to teach these two core subjects. The models the Literacy Hour in the case of the Literacy Strategy ,and theDaily Mathematics lesson (45 minutes) in the case of the NumeracyStrategy ,were highly prescriptive and entirely dependent on teacher-initiated was signiQcant about the models for the delivery of the LiteracyHour and the Daily Mathematics lesson was that they o!ered little di!eren-tiation between a Year 1 class and a Year 6 class ,between children whowere (in some cases) just 5 years old ,and children who were 11. Strategiesthat were seen as e!ective for Key Stage 2 children were assumed to beequally appropriate for Key Stage 1 children ,and Year 1 teachers foundthemselves having to comply with school policies and approaches thatwere universally applied across the whole primary age it can be seen that ,at a time when teachers of Reception age childrenwere being expected to follow a play-based ,learner-centred curriculum ,teachers in Year 1 were being expected to introduce a prescriptive ,teacher-centred formula for the education of 6-year-olds.

6 It was inevitable , there -fore ,that as children moved from the early years to the primary phase oftheir education ,the experiences of many would be abruptly di!erent andcreate problems not just for children ,but for their teachers for reviewing the transition of children from theFoundation Stage to Key Stage 1 While the paragraphs above have identiQed why there is currently an issuearound children s di!ering experiences as they make the transition fromthe Foundation Stage to Key Stage 1 ,it is important now to review the evi-dence about the impact of these di!erent policy initiatives on children sactual following pages are intended to give you ,your senior leadershipteams ,governors and LAs a strong rationale for reviewing practice aroundthe transition of children from the early years into primary schooling. Webegin by looking at government reports about transition at this stage ofeducation. Then we will look at national data from the Foundation StageProQle outcomes and what this tells us about children s we look at Qndings from one LA that consulted its children and 6 Moving on to Key Stage 119319_CH01 7/1/10 10:51 am Page 6parents about their experiences of and feelings about transition into KeyStage 1.

7 Finally ,we will revisit what is known about child development atthis age ,and consider whether current practice meets children s develop-mental needs. If you need to convince anyone maybe even yourself thattransition is an issue worthy of attention ,then the following pages shouldgive you an unequivocal rationale for doing reports about transition from Foundation Stage to Key Stage 1 During the early years of the millennium ,it was not only individual teach-ers who were identifying a gulf between Reception and Year 1 ,the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) were also identi-fying the issue as its inpectors moved from school to 2004 ,Ofsted produced a report entitled Transition from the ReceptionYear to Year 1(Ofsted 2004). Its Qndings suggested that insufficient consid-eration was being given to the relationship between the curricula in theFoundation Stage and in Year 1 and that transition to more formalapproaches in Year 1 was sometimes too abrupt.

8 In particular ,inspectorshighlighted that in some schools emphasis was given to the two nationalstrategies at the expense of regular attention to other their recommendations ,inspectors gave the following Point forAction : Schools which admit pupils to the Foundation Stage shouldensure that learning experiences in Year 1 build upon the practicalapproaches and structured play in Year R (reception) (Ofsted 2004: 3).This report by Ofsted was swiftly followed by another. Commissionedby the government s Sure Start Unit at the Department for Education andEmployment (DfEE) and conducted by researchers from the NationalFoundation for Educational Research (NFER),A Study of the Transitionfrom the Foundation Stage to Key Stage 1(Sanders et ) found simi-lar problems. These researchers identiQed the biggest challenge to transi-tion being posed by the move from a play-based approach in theFoundation Stage to a more structured curriculum in Key Stage 1.

9 Theyreported that the introduction of the full Literacy Hour and the DailyMathematics lesson were identiQed ,by teachers ,as challenging because itwas difficult to get young children to sit down and listen to the teacher. Thechildren ,in turn ,were reported as valuing their experiences in Receptionand regretting the loss of opportunities to learn through play. Some chil-dren were worried by the workload expected in Year 1 ,found writingdifficult and were bored by the requirement to sit and listen to the :why is there an issue? 19319_CH01 7/1/10 10:51 am Page 7As an antidote to these concerns ,the government s National AssessmentAgency (NAA) produced a guidance document entitled Continuing theLearning Journey(NAA 2005) ,the purpose of which was to supportschools and local authorities in working towards improving transitionbetween the foundation stage and key stage 1 . Here ,it is recommendedthat schools promote continuity in learning between the FoundationStage and Year 1 by introducing a range of key features of good early yearspractice into Year 1.

10 But the messages from Continuing the LearningJourneywere frequently overshadowed by the two national strategies withtheir conRicting messages about pedagogy and practice. While none ofthese documents were (or are) statutory ,Ofsted paid more attention to thedelivery of the national strategies than they did to Continuing the LearningJourney ,with the result that the more teacher-directed approaches of thestrategies gained a stronger foothold than those from the NAA that werepromoting more child-initiated more recent national reviews have highlighted further proposals toimprove transition to Key Stage 1. The Independent Review of the PrimaryCurriculum: Final Report(DCSF2009) ,commissioned by the Secretary ofState for Children ,Schools and Families and led by Sir Jim Rose ,has pro-posed a number of signiQcant changes to the primary curriculum whichwill impact on transition at this stage. These include a move away from pri-mary subjects and towards new areas of learning that are intended to becoterminous with those of the new EYFS* (see Figure ).