Moving on to Primary 1: An Exploratory Study of the Experience of Transition from Pre-School to Primary explores the findings of two academics from Stirling University's Institute of Education, Christine Stephen and Peter Cope, who studied the experiences of a group of 27 children during their first year in primary school.
The report observes that for all the children in the sample, contact with their primary school began during the summer term before they transferred.
Children and parents were offered visits to the primary school and there was some transfer of written records.
However, transition arrangements 'typically paid more attention to informing parents and children about the new environment they were entering than to learning about children's pre-school experiences'. Where a child's pre-school experience had involved going to more than one provider, teachers sometimes did not have information from all the settings.
Teachers did not make full use of the information available, even though some examples observed by the researchers indicated how useful it could be.
In one instance, reading a boy's pre-school record alerted his teacher to pre-reading skills that were masked by his immature behaviour, and helped her to start him at 'about the right place'.
The study also reveals some discontinuities between the way teachers view pre-school provision and the perspectives of the teachers and nursery nurses who provide it. Primary teachers focused on children's readiness for learning in the primary classroom.
The report says, 'While skills acquired in pre-school, such as being able to use a pencil, to colour in or use scissors, were mentioned as useful by a few teachers, there was no mention of the learning that children might have been expected to have achieved through their experience of the Curriculum Framework for Children 3 to 5 .'
Pre-school practitioners in both private and local authority settings, however, saw fulfilling the requirements of the Curriculum Framework as crucial for satisfactory provision. They regarded pre-school education as a stage in its own right, not as a preparation for school.
Primary teachers expressed the view that nursery classes were a better preparation for P1 than other forms of pre-school provision, though this judgement was related to children's behaviour rather than their learning or attainment. Some suggested that pupils who had attended a nursery class were 'better trained' for school and more likely to behave appropriately in the classroom.
The report adds, 'A few teachers referred to a negative legacy from pre-school if children wished to continue to make choices about which resources to engage with or to enjoy the freedom from structure and time constraints that had characterised much of their time in pre-school settings. A preference for or expectation of the freedom to choose activities and pursue these independently was a way of working that resulted in some tension between teachers and children in this study.'
The report, part of the Scottish Executive's Insight series, is available on the website www.scotland.gov.uk.
