Transfer from the Primary Classroom

20 Years On

Maurice Galton, Linda Hargreaves

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134699339
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The ORACLE (Observation and Classroom Learning and Evaluation) and its follow-up study address the following questions:
Has teaching in the primary school changed over the past twenty years?
Has pupil performance improved or declined?
Are the links between certain teacher approaches and pupil achievement still the same?
Has the National Curriculum had any important consequences for the way in which transfer is conducted?
One of the main claims of the National Curriculum is that it has provided greater continuity through the various stages and this should be reflected in smoother transition from one school to the next. This book focuses on the issue of transfer from the primary to the secondary school, using data from the ORACLE project.
This study which took place from 1975 to 1980, followed by 'Son of ORACLE', the study of group-work in the primary classroom 1980 to 1983, has had an enormous influence on the debate on primary education. The studies described in detail what took place in primary classrooms, the teaching styles used by teachers and the responses made by pupils. It linked these processes to pupil performance. Finally, it followed the pupils as they transferred out of the primary school into the secondary phase of education.
At present a new research project is being carried out in Leicester. It involves studying primary schools for one year and then following the children as they transfer to the secondary phase or to a middle school. The project involves two thirds of the schools used in the original ORACLE research. In addition, the same observation instruments and the same tests, modified for cultural differences, are being used.

1

TRANSFER AND TRANSITION

Maurice Galton and Linda Hargreaves

Unlike any other educational system, that of England and Wales requires a sizeable number of its schoolchildren to engage in a process which, at its best, research suggests causes slight apprehension, while at its worst pro- vokes deeply felt anxiety. It is a process that takes up a considerable amount of some teachers’ time and effort – time which some would argue might be better devoted to classroom teaching - and results in some pupils under- achieving in comparison to their performance in the previous years. The process, known as transfer,¹ concerns the movement of a whole year group of pupils from one school to another. Each new school year, apart from pupils aged 6, 15 and 17, large numbers of children will start life in a new school where they will come face to face with new teachers and other pupils whom they do not recognise. This can be a moment of great apprehension. The children may have spent the summer vacation attempting to come to terms with the impending change, perhaps wondering whether the various rumours about ‘strict’ teachers or what the older pupils do to the ‘new kids’ are true.

The youngest children to experience transfer are those who move at age 7 from ‘Infant’ (5–7 years) schools covering Key Stage 1 (KS1) to ‘Junior’ (7–11 years, KS2) schools. Most of these KS1 ‘feeder’ schools will come within the 546 nursery schools recorded in the DfEE (1999) statistics. However, these figures do not always distinguish clearly between schools which operate according to different age ranges. For example, some all- through primary schools, that is those which cover both KS1 and KS2, contain nurseries and would be included in the quoted figure of 546. There are similar problems with middle schools where a distinction is made between a primary school ‘ deemed middle ’ (8–12 years) and a secondary school ‘ deemed middle ’ which could cover either the 9–13, 10–14 or 11–14 years age ranges. Moreover, some 5–8, 5–9 and 5–10 years ‘ first ’ schools feeding into middle school will also contain nursery units. Children going to school in LEAs with middle school systems will therefore move school at either 8, 9, 10 or 11 years of age and again at either 12, 13 or 14 years respectively. Local Education Authorities also operate different systems at secondary level. Some have 11–16 schools followed by transfer to a sixth form college or college of Further Education, while others favour ‘ all- through ’ (11–18 years) schools. Hence the statement at the beginning of the paragraph that every autumn, with the exception of those aged 6, 15 or 17, some children, somewhere in England and Wales, will be engaged in the process called transfer.

To the outsider the system must seem remarkably complicated and difficult to manage. Most other countries around the world uniformly adopt either two- or three-tier systems. Our more complex arrangements came into being mainly as the result of secondary school reorganisation during the 1970s. Faced with a need to create a comprehensive system without spending vast sums of money, most local authorities reorganised the education system around the existing stock of buildings and then sought, subsequently, to pro- vide an educational justification for the chosen scheme. Thus, as Andy Hargreaves (1980) argues, a notion of a particular phase of development between childhood and adolescence was invented where homogeneity was said to exist in physical, moral, emotional and intellectual growth. This period, known as the middle years (Hargreaves 1980: 96) was said to differ markedly from other phases of children’s development. However, whether it began when a child reached the age of 8 and ended at 12 or occupied the years between 9 and 13 often appeared to be influenced by the state of exist- ing buildings, the size of catchment areas and projected population growth.² Those seeking to justify reorganisation based on transfer at 8 and 12 saw in middle schools the opportunity to extend the best of primary education for a further year (Sharp 1980). Elsewhere in other local authorities, those arguing for a 9 to 13 system provided the alternative justification that able children in the top half of the primary school could gain access to specialist subject teachers who had previous experience in secondary schools (Marsh 1980).

Transfer and curriculum continuity

Whatever system was eventually chosen, however, it was soon established that there were problems in managing transfer so that a satisfactory degree of curriculum continuity was maintained. This was particularly important when three tiers of reorganisation were involved since transfer at 13 (and even more so at 14) left upper secondary schools little time to prepare stu- dents for the public examinations at 16. Over time, therefore, the justification for the middle school system changed. Instead of merely offer- ing opportunities for either extending primary practice or introducing secondary specialisms earlier, many schools now claimed to provide a cur- riculum for the middle years that closely matched this putative ‘unique’ stage of children’s intellectual development. Not surprisingly, tensions between upper and middle schools in matters of curriculum developed. A middle school, for example, might have favoured local history as a source of project work, part of an integrated humanities scheme, to the frustration of the upper school which included social history as one of its main options for what was then the GCE Ordinary Level examination or the alternative CSE (Certificate of Secondary Education). Children from this particular middle school would then be expected to cope with aspects of the industrial revo- lution with little knowledge of the political context, whereas pupils from another feeder school might not be similarly disadvantaged.³

In the 1970s, as the comprehensive system rapidly expanded, schools tended to deal with the issue of transfer in one of two ways. Some believed in a ‘continuity’ model, believing that pupils would adjust more easily if the ethos in the first post-transfer year remained as similar as possible to that of the primary school. These schools tended to keep their first year pupils away from their older peers by providing a separate play area, holding first year group assemblies and, most importantly by retaining the system where the form teacher took the pupils for most of their lessons. Other schools, how- ever, argued that transfer was a ‘rite of passage’ marking the emergence of adolescence, and this needed to be symbolised by a distinct shift in the pat- tern of schooling. These schools introduced specialist subject teaching, often accompanied by setting and banding for key subjects such as English and mathematics from the first day of the autumn term. Identifying the more able children and those with learning difficulties on entry to these schools so that they could be placed in the appropriate sets was problematic, since accurate information about the pupils’ previous performance prior to entry was unre- liable. With the ending of the eleven plus, few primary schools favoured standardised testing and suitable alternative diagnostic tests were not read- ily available. Faced with the choice of either a wide-ranging mixed ability group or a set with a small number of ‘difficult children’, secondary teach- ers (many with only previous grammar school experience) adopted the strategy of a ‘fresh start’. Under either of these arrangements, able children could easily become bored by repeating work they had already mastered, while slow learning children could find the rapid pace of these revision classes too much for them. In both cases, therefore, academic progress might be retarded as a consequence.

The consultative document, Education in Schools (DES 1977), acknowl- edged that there were substantial problems of these kinds at the points of transfer and argued that the whole problem needed the urgent attention of Local Education Authorities. Gorwood (1986) reported that one primary headteacher discovered, while lecturing to a group of secondary principals, that many never looked at the transfer documents which were passed on from primary schools, a situation which, according to some LEA advisers, still persists in many schools. Most of these principals supported their staff in adopting the ‘ tabula rasa ’ policy in respect of new pupils described in the previous paragraph. In support of this approach it was argued that a secondary school’s objectives were necessarily more academically specific than those adopted by most primary schools. Consequently, secondary teach- ers could more efficiently ascertain a child’s ability in their specialist subject without reference to primary records, particularly since these were often regarded as vague and sometimes misleading (Orsborn 1977). Another study of transfer procedures in the Isle of Wight (Stillman and Maychell 1982) reported on attempts to develop some general guidelines for producing the transfer record. This aimed to establish uniformity in presentation, compa- rability of assessments and information which was needs related , in that it provided what receiving (transfer) schools wanted. At around the same time, across the country, numerous working parties on record-keeping were set up as LEAs attempted to respond to the 1977 DES circular in an effort to improve curriculum continuity. The general conclusion, however, was that these working parties were only partially successful and many enjoyed ‘a che- quered history’ (Gorwood 1986: 142).

Early studies on transfer

Much of the earlier research on transfer, therefore, focused on the issues dis- cussed so far; particularly on establishing greater continuity in the process and reducing anxiety among pupils. Nisbet and Entwistle (1969) carried out one of the earliest and largest studies. This attempted to establish the best age at which to transfer to secondary school in order to minimise such problems. These researchers followed 3,200 9-year-old Scottish children over a 5-year period (what in England is now known as from Year 5 to Year 9). The main focus of the study was the linkage between intelligence and academic progress during transfer and beyond. Verbal reasoning scores were found to be accurate predictors of attainment between the ages of 9 and 11 but the inter-correlations between the two variables fell thereafter. This suggested that there was little to be gained by keeping children in primary education in order to increase the accuracy of the selection process, in schools where pupils were streamed by ability. Nisbet and Entwistle found that other fac- tors such as socio-economic status, parental involvement, pupils’ ambition and their social maturity were stronger correlates of success, with ambition and social maturity particularly important for girls. Nisbett and Entwistle concluded that the youngest and least mature pupils were those at greatest risk during the transfer process.

Murdoch (1966) who analysed 550 post-transfer pupil essays adopted another approach. Only 11 per cent of boys and 8 per cent of girls said they found transfer a ‘wholly enjoyable’ experience. Nearly two-thirds of both boys and girls experienced difficulties of some sort. However, after one term in the new school 80 per cent of pupils said they preferred it to their primary school. Taken together, therefore, these two studies suggest that while the negative social effects of transfer wear off reasonably quickly for the majority of pupils, the impact on academic progress does not.

The organisational features of the transfer process were explored by the then Birmingham Education Department which carried out a large-scale survey of Birmingham schools, most of which transferred pupils from pri- mary to secondary at the age of 11 (BEDC 1975). The Birmingham Department team found little evidence of liaison between the primary and secondary schools, and that which did exist mostly consisted of visits of secondary teachers to the primary school, with little or no movement in the other direction. With regard to the attitudes of the pupils, the survey found that few had any notion or experience of what the prospective transfer school would be like although the vast majority eventually enjoyed their first year, liked the challenge, and the variety of activities. They particularly appreciated being treated as adults by the new teachers. The most popular subject was physical education followed by English which was liked more than geography and history. The sample was equally divided on mathe- matics but didn’t like religious education. Liking a subject seemed to be strongly associated with the liking for an individual teacher. Thus, where there was a hiatus in progress, it seemed to be heavily influenced by the rela- tionship with the new teacher. In this regard it is of interest to note that the survey found that even a year after transfer, 33 per cent of children said that they still missed their primary teacher, compared with 44 per cent who felt this way prior to the move. Nevertheless, in accord with other studies around this time, the Birmingham team seemed to suggest that most pupils settled fairly quickly into the routine of the new school. The main recom- mendations of the Report focused on such things as the need for better liaison, better communication between the home and the school and a new record system including a transfer card which would inform the new school about a pupil’s attendance record, his (her) attainment, background and behaviour.

Another large-scale study was that of Youngman and Lunzer (1977) who followed 1,500 pupils in rural and urban schools through and beyond the transfer period. As elsewhere, the majority of pupils were found to express satisfaction with their new school, but a small proportion, around 10 per cent, continued to find the experience distressing for at least the first two terms after transfer. In addition to attitudes to school and measures of social and personal academic self-concept, scores in IQ, reading and math- ematics were collected. Cluster analysis, carried out based on these ratings of social and academic adjustment, yielded six pupil types. Of particular interest was a ‘disenchanted’ group who had moderate positive, social adjustment ratings, and initially performed well academically, but whose performance subsequently declined gradually over time. The other set of pupils perceived to be seriously at risk was the ‘worried’ group who had negative social adjustment ratings, low academic ability and whose perfor- mance continued to decline over the twelve-month period during which the research was carried out.

As we saw earlier, some secondary schools attempted to ease the transfer process for these groups of children at risk. Maintaining a primary ethos in the first year after transfer and gradually introducing changes during the whole year, rather than in the first few weeks in the new school, were said to have a marked effect by Nisbet and Entwistle (1969), but Dutch and McCall (1974) were less convinced of the effectiveness of this strategy. They agreed that compared to a control school, where pupils changed to a secondary-style curriculum immediately after transfer, there were consistent though slight improvements in attainment, attitude and personality measures. However, they argued that these outcome measures were confounded by other vari- ables such as ability. Nash (1973) was also unenthusiastic about such schemes and argued that, in any case, so-called integrated approaches in primary school did not operate at the ‘top junior’ end of the school and, therefore, there was little point in introducing and maintaining them in the first year after transfer.

In summary, therefore, these groups of studies identify the children most at risk from the transfer process as younger, less mature, less confident pupils; ones of non-academic disposition, often from a poor socio-economic background. These children found difficulty in adjusting to the physical and academic organisation of the new school, and the standards of work as well as experiencing problems with pupil and teacher relationships. The most suc- cessful pupils, therefore, were the academically able who were self-confident, more socially mature and tended to receive strong parental support (Spelman 1979).

The ORACLE transfer study

The researchers cited above did not follow the actual events taking place during transfer. Most, like Youngman and Lunzer’s (1977) study, measured the attainment and attitudes of pupils while they were still in the feeder schools and then again after a certain time in the new school. The problem with this approach is that while it identifies which pupils are adversely affected by the change, it is unable to put forward detailed explanations of why this might be so (Youngman 1978). While it alerts teachers to a prob- lem, therefore, it can offer only limited advice on how best to deal with it.

The Oracle Transfer Study (1975–80) adopted a different approach. Pupils were followed into the new school from their feeder school, after first having been observed for two years previously in the primary school. The work was published in two volumes, Moving from the Primary Classroom (Galton and Willcocks 1983) and Inside the Secondary Classroom (Delamont and Galton 1986). The main focus of the ORACLE study was on the observation of teachers and pupils, but pupils’ academic performance was also tested in the final term before leaving the primary school and again at the end of the first school year after transfer.

Attitude inventories as well as a questionnaire measuring anxiety levels were also administered. The latter, known as WIDIS (What I Did In School), was first used by Bennett (1976) in his study of formal and informal practice. WIDIS was administered in the June before transfer, again in November and again in the June after transfer. Thus it was possible to determine whether anxiety levels began to fall within the first few weeks in the new school. In fact, the patterns of anxiety were very similar to those found by both Nesbit and Entwistle (1969) and by Youngman and Lunzer (1977). Anxiety was highest in June just before transfer, had declined in November and had fallen further by the following June. An exception to this trend was found in the two schools that maintained a primary ethos throughout the first year after transfer. In both schools anxiety increased during the first year, reaching the peak just before the children departed from the primary area at the beginning of their second year in the new school. This was attributed to the fact that setting and streaming started in Year 2 and the pupils were clearly conscious of the importance of doing well in the end of the first year examinations. Further, being reorganised into sets and streams could result in being separated from close friends. Some of these friendships may have only begun during the post-transfer year.

The main focus of the ORACLE study was on the curriculum; the way teachers delivered it and the manner in which the pupils responded to this teaching. Eight target pupils (one boy and one girl drawn from the top, middle and botto...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Transfer from the Primary Classroom
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• 1 Transfer and transition
• 2 ‘Getting used to each other’: cross-phase liaison and induction
• 3 Moving up to big school: the first few days
• 4 Teaching in the transfer schools
• 5 The consequences of transfer for pupils: attitudes and attainment
• 6 Patterns of pupil behaviour in the transfer schools
• 7 Transfer: a future agenda
• References
• Index