Preparing For The Year 6 Transition To Secondary School: How To Make Sure Your Pupils Are Ready
The year 6 to year 7 transition may be a yearly occurrence, but it never gets any easier for teachers or pupils. Drawing on years of working with local secondary schools, year 6 teacher Emily Weston (@primaryteachew) shares practical advice on supporting pupils through the move from primary to secondary school, from building the right skills to running transition activities that ease the anxiety and set every child up for a successful transition.
The transition to secondary school is one of the biggest changes a child experiences in their school life, and it affects their confidence, their feelings about learning and sometimes their mental health. This guide covers why the year 6 to year 7 transition matters, what “year 7 ready” really means, how to support pupils’ wellbeing and anxiety, the transition activities that work, and how to build a transition team with your local secondary schools. There is also a free organisational skills lesson and a secondary transition maths test to help you get started.
Year 6 Transition Lesson: Organisational Skills
Download this free PowerPoint lesson to help your Year 6 class test their organisational skills during the Year 6 to Year 7 transition.
Download Free Now!Why the year 6 to year 7 transition matters
Every year 6 teacher knows the year has two big milestones. The first is the SATs. The second comes once the tests are done, and it is the transition to secondary school.
Change can be hard at any stage of life, but the move from primary to secondary school brings specific challenges that can affect children’s self-esteem and confidence. (Research from West et al is worth reading on this.)
Children spend up to eight years in the same familiar school environment, and by year 6 they have become big fish in their school pond. Come September, they leave their classmates and the staff who know their name for a very different organisation: a larger school, a different teacher for every subject, and a real leap in their ability to organise, plan and manage themselves.
It is not surprising that emotions can run high at the start of the new school year.
There is also an attainment story. Many young people experience the “year 7 dip”, a measurable drop in confidence and progress in the first autumn term of secondary education. It is usually temporary: pupils supported well through the first few weeks tend to recover by Christmas. That makes the work we do in primary school, before they start secondary school, genuinely worthwhile.
To minimise the negative impacts and increase the chances of a successful transition, it helps to get together as a team in your own school and agree what good practice looks like. Here I share the work I have been doing.
Time to focus now on the Year 6 transition
Every year, after SATS, Year 6 teachers send their classes off to a variety of secondary establishments and each child handles this move very differently.
Even if they are (mostly) ready to move on to the next stage of their life: to make new friends, develop their knowledge and learn even more life skills it’s still a daunting process; not just for the children, but also for the teacher.
Having had previous experience in a small village school where nearly every child from our school and other local feeder schools went to the local secondary, it was a very different experience this year to have children from my class go to around 8 different schools ranging from grammar schools to a specialist school for autism.
Each of these schools will expect different forms, activities and transition days to be completed before the child begins in September.
Each school will also want to know all about the children that are coming to them: their academic ability, their strengths, areas that may need support and also about any children who need additional support transitioning for a range of reasons.
But the bottom line each school is trying to discover, is whether or not the child is ready for secondary.
Are they fully prepared for the transition from Year 6 to secondary school?
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Watch Skye in actionWhat “year 7 ready” really means
One of my local secondaries decided to look in more detail, with year 6 teacher input, at what they expected children to be once they arrived. This is what we came up with. We wanted pupils to be:
- Independent
- Organised
- A responsible citizen
- Resilient
- Self-sufficient
- A “ready” learner
There are many other traits we would hope for, and of course schools still need to know a child’s academic ability. But these felt like a strong starting point: a set of qualities that help children cope with the social and emotional side of secondary life. Here is why each one matters.
But why did we feel that these points in particular were important when looking at the Year 6 to Year 7 transition?
I will break down the reasons for each below.
Independence skills in year 6 pupils
I still have children in my class who expect everything to be done for them by an adult. In year 6, I still get asked, “I’ve finished my book, what do I do?” or “Miss, I can’t find my pencil.” The idea of finding a spare themselves is sometimes still beyond them.
Trying to explain that next year they need to remember their own homework, cooking ingredients and PE kit can go over their heads, because they have not had to do it before. At secondary school, pupils are increasingly expected to take ownership of their actions and to get themselves prepared each morning.
Organisation skills in year 6 pupils
For me, this is one of the most important parts of being successful at secondary school. Pupils will need to use a timetable to get to different lessons, know their way around a much bigger building, prioritise their homework and get the right equipment ready.
It is easy to forget these skills have to be taught. In most primary schools, pupils do not move around buildings, their books are kept for them, and they do not provide their own pens and rulers. Remembering all of this can feel overwhelming at first.
So I produced a lesson to help pupils find strategies for the transition and their first few weeks, based around the day of a student who has just made the same move.
You can download the free organisational skills lesson here and use it with your year 6 class.
Making them into a responsible citizen
Most primary schools have values children use in their daily life: honesty, kindness, generosity. To some degree these make them responsible citizens. But I do not think that is the whole picture.
My class were not aware of many of the world issues around them that they could have an impact on. Reading The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Q Raúf, for example, opened their eyes to what a refugee is. Developing a responsible citizen is not just about understanding issues, though; it is about being proactive in making a difference, something pupils build on throughout secondary education. The post-SATs period is a ready-made slot for a project on exactly this.
Encouraging resilience in Year 6
Resilience is the capacity to recover quickly from difficulty. When we hear “difficulty” in relation to transition, our minds often jump to children with SEND or those in a nurture group, and rightly so. They will often need additional support, extra transition days and coaching through the process.
But we often overlook the children who just get on with it. They might feel extremely nervous inside, yet because they do not show it, we assume they are fine. Often they are not as prepared as we think, and they can quietly struggle.
Helping children understand what resilience is, and what obstacles they may face on transition days, lets these quietly nervous pupils feel a little more confident. Information is the first tool for resilience. The second is learning to manage mistakes on their own, with less adult support than they are used to.
Making sure pupils are self-sufficient & ready to learn
These two tie together really easily.
Being self-sufficient is being able to problem-solve and deal with more of the ‘emotional’ problems, which again, are dealt with much more frequently for them within primary schools.
Every day (it feels like anyway!) I have children come up to me declaring things like:
‘He kicked the ball away from me!’ – They’re playing football…
‘She didn’t talk to me all break time!’ – Did you try and talk to them? No….?
‘But he said he was going to tell on me!’ – Well, as you then kicked him I’m not altogether surprised…
It is often these issues that prevent children from being ‘Ready to Learn’.
It’s these issues that prevent them from being able to walk straight into a classroom and be prepared to get started on their lesson from the moment they sit down on their seats.
Again, we need to give children the tools to solve their own problems in order to allow them to come back from break or lunchtime having already solved any new friendship issues among themselves.
There will always be problems that we will need to help children with but in my classroom I’m trying to ask more questions now, or give them time to think about how they want me to resolve it for them before I then step in.
Supporting pupils’ wellbeing and anxiety through transition
If there is one thing the transition to secondary school throws up more than any other, it is feelings. Excitement, yes, but also worry, and for some pupils real anxiety.
The most common worries are smaller and more specific than adults assume: getting lost, not finding the toilets, being late to a lesson, forgetting equipment, or not making new friends. The good news is that specific worries have specific solutions. “I’m worried I’ll get lost” is far easier to support than “I’m worried about everything.”
A few things help here. Give children structured time to voice their feelings rather than bottling them up. Normalise the nerves by telling them that almost every year 7 feels the same way on their first day, and that the feeling fades within the first few weeks. Where you can, name the bigger feelings openly, because anxiety left unspoken tends to grow.
Be alert to the link between the transition to secondary school and mental health, too. For some young people, particularly those with additional needs or unsettled home lives, the move can be genuinely destabilising. These children benefit from extra transition days, a familiar adult to check in with, and close communication between primary and secondary teachers so nothing gets lost.
One practical activity I like: ask pupils to write down one worry and one thing they are looking forward to. It surfaces anxieties you would otherwise miss, and it reminds children that nerves and excitement can sit side by side.
Practical transition activities and ideas
Talking about readiness only goes so far. Pupils settle faster when they have practised the new routines for themselves. Here are the transition ideas and activities I have found work best when preparing a class for the transition to secondary school.
Secondary week
Run a “secondary week” in your own primary school. Put the class on a timetable, have them move around the building for different lessons with different teachers, and ask them to pack the right equipment each time. It is a low-stakes way to rehearse the single biggest change of secondary school life.
New school route
Practise the route to the new school. Spending an afternoon talking through and, where possible, walking the route reduces a surprising amount of anxiety. Children who know which entrance to use and what to do if they miss the bus feel far more in control.
All about me
Create an “all about me” activity that pupils can take to their new setting. It gives them a voice in the process and helps their new tutor get to know them before the first day. Some schools have current year 7 students answer year 6 pupils’ questions, which is a fantastic way to build relationships across the year groups.
Buddy systems
Use buddy systems and transition days well. Many schools pair new students with older pupils or run treasure hunts so children learn their way around the building before lessons begin. The aim is for the school to feel a little familiar before day one.
Working as a transition team with local secondary schools
The smoothest transitions I have seen happen when primary and secondary teachers work as one transition team rather than two separate schools.
When I taught in a small village school, nearly every child went to the same local secondary. This year was very different, with children heading to around eight schools, each with its own forms, activities and transition days, and each wanting to know about the children coming to them: their academic ability, their strengths, and where they need additional support.
A few things make this cross-phase work better. Share information early and honestly, especially about pupils who need additional support. Invite secondary staff in to meet the children and answer their “is it true that…” questions, which does more to settle nerves than any letter home. And keep parents in the loop throughout, because a confident parent supports a confident child. Parents are part of the transition team too, and the more they understand about the new school, the school environment and what to expect, the better they can help.
If face-to-face visits are not possible, video works well. A short clip from key teachers, office staff or SLT gives pupils a friendly face to recognise on their first day and helps build a sense of belonging before they arrive.
How subjects change from primary to secondary
Pupils need to be ready to take on new academic challenges, because topics introduced in primary school are expanded and made more demanding at secondary level.
Take area as an example. The two slides below show the same topic at primary and secondary level. Both look at area, but the secondary version is far more detailed and demanding, in the information on the slide and the cognitive steps required.
This is exactly why we train Skye, our AI maths tutor, to reflect the same step up. Built by teachers and maths experts, Skye uses the same pedagogy, curriculum and lesson structure as our traditional one-to-one tutoring, guiding students through a secondary maths lesson differently from a primary one, so the level of challenge matches where each pupil is.
The first few weeks of year 7
The first few weeks set the tone. This is when new students are learning names, routines, where to be and when, all while managing their feelings about a much bigger school.
Reassure pupils, and their parents, that it is normal to feel tired at first, and that things settle quickly. Keeping parents informed through these first few weeks matters too: parents who understand what the transition to secondary school involves can reassure their child at home and reinforce the same messages. Encourage children to break the experience into manageable steps: get through the first day, then the first week, then the first half term. Big challenges feel smaller when they are chopped up.
When children have practised the skills, talked through their worries and met a few friendly faces, those first few weeks are far less daunting.
The post-SATs lull is the perfect time to focus on transition
Preparing for the transition from year 6 to year 7 can feel like a difficult process for both teachers and pupils, but with careful planning it does not have to be.
By working on the skills, the wellbeing and the practical transition activities in this guide before your class moves on, you give every child the best chance of a successful transition, and of enjoying everything that comes after it.
Year 6 to Year 7 transition FAQs
Ensure that students are able to navigate in the new setting, that they are able to follow a timetable and find their way around the new school. Students should be familiar with what equipment they need to bring each day and are ready to take on new academic, emotional and social challenges.
Students need to be aware of what is expected of them in secondary school. They need to understand that the change will be a challenge but that they are ready to take it on.
A transition in the context of school is the movement within and between educational settings. For example, the transition from Year 6 in primary school, to Year 7 in secondary school.
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