The move from primary to secondary school is an exciting time in a child’s school career. It is also one that can cause anxiety for some children. Kirkintilloch High School has an excellent transition programme, designed to ensure the move from primary to secondary is a seamless, stress-free experience.
We want to support this transition to make it as easy as possible for you and your child. Our primary-secondary transition programme normally begins with a tour of the school and an opportunity to meet with our pupils and staff. However, at this challenging time we will have to break from many of the approaches which have worked successfully in the past.
We are working with your child’s primary school teachers to creatively plan transition activities that will support your child while also fitting with current restrictions. Although not all arrangements are finalised, we thought it might be useful to give you a timeline of some of our proposed plans:
Introductions - We plan to visit each primary school virtually. This will give your children a chance to meet us and to ask questions of some of our pupils.
Virtual tour - During our introductions we will launch our virtual tour. This works much like Google Street View and will allow your children to explore different parts of the school. While pupils will initially be introduced to this in class, we will also send a link home to allow you and your family to explore it further.
Parents’ meeting - We will replace our information evening for parents with a series of online ‘chat’ events. We will host one per primary school and will most likely use Microsoft Teams as the platform. Details on this will follow in the new year.
Class/home subject activities – Using the virtual tour platform, we will embed tasks, challenges and videos. Some of these will be introduced in your child's P7 classroom; others are designed to be explored at home. Some of the embedded videos will be prepared by our secondary pupils and will help your child see what it is like to be a pupil at KHS.
Joint meetings with KHS and primary staff - We have planned a series of meetings for our Support for Learning and Guidance staff to meet with P7 class teachers, depute head teachers and head teachers to discuss enhanced transitions. We will use these initial meetings to plan for a coherent and seamless transition for all pupils but also to make specific arrangements for those who may need enhanced support.
At this stage, we will not speculate as to whether we will or will not be able to undertake the normal transition activities towards the end of the 2020-21 session. However, we will continue to provide subject specific activities to your child's primary school and to engage with them at home. We will also finalise plans in key areas, such as uniform fitting, enhanced transition visits and induction days, ensuring your child feels ready and confident about their start in August.
Although many of our approaches will be different this session, we will continue to work hard to ensure that your child feels fully supported when they join us in August 2021.
We know that our P7 pupils are enthusiastic and excited about starting at Kirkintilloch High School and we look forward to welcoming them all into our school as soon as it is possible!
You may also find it interesting to follow updates from Kirkintilloch High School on our school Twitter page: @KirkintillochHS
If your child does not attend one of the cluster primary schools (Gartconner, Harestanes, Hillhead, Oxgang, Twechar or Craighead), please contact the school office on 0141 955 2372 to discuss with the relevant Depute Head Teacher about the transition process.
