Primary to Secondary

Kingdown School and its feeder Primary Schools are part of a Learning Partnership. They are committed to working together to provide an education that fully prepares all students for the world today and for the future.

The Transition Programme

There is a well established Transition Programme designed to link learning between Key Stages 2 and 3, with a focus on key learning skills. This ensures that the students make a confident start to their Year 7 curriculum. Every effort is made to enable students to settle in quickly and feel part of the Kingdown community in their new Houses, tutor groups and classes.

As a parent, how can I help?

Achieving the balance between doing too much or too little for your child is difficult. A useful rule of thumb is never do anything regularly for your child that they are capable of doing for themselves.

A list of the top ten worries that Year 6 students always mention:

• Being bullied
• Not making friends
• Getting lost
• Homework
• Not being able to do the work
• Getting to school and back – if it involves a bus journey
• Not having the right books and equipment
• Not knowing what to do if there’s a problem
• Not getting on with teachers
• Getting into trouble

Most students are anxious about not being with their friends and not making new friends. The most helpful thing you can do is tell your child that everyone else will be feeling anxious, and within a week or two their worries will have disappeared.

At Kingdown we make every effort to ensure that no student is socially isolated, and new friendship groups are actively encouraged and supported.

The other major worry for Year 6 students is bullying. Kingdown has a rigorous anti-bullying policy and we pride ourselves on being a ‘telling’ community. Bullying of any description is not tolerated. If your child is being bullied at school, they must tell their tutor, another teacher or any other adult in the school straight away.

The remaining worries are nearly all to do with the new organisational demands that will be placed upon them. Luckily these are the areas in which you can help the most.