Primary to secondary school transitions: analysis

Footnotes

1. Throughout, references to primary school findings refer to data collected in P6 while references to secondary school findings refer to data collected at the time the children were in S1.

2. The cohort children are born over a 12 month period from June 2004 to May 2005. As a result they straddle two school year groups. Data collection was phased over two years to ensure all children were at the same school stage at the point of data collection.

3. Children were categorised as having a positive, moderate or negative transition experience based on the following factors, each of which were reported both while they were still in primary school (in Primary 6) and after they had moved to secondary school (in Secondary 1): How much they looked forward to going to school, how much they hated school, whether they had skipped school, whether the school had been in contact with parents about the child's behaviour, how often they tried their best at school and how much they liked English and maths.

4. Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004, amended 2009, places specific duties on local authorities, with clear time scales for transition planning and practice for children and young people identified as having additional support needs.

5. Free school meals and essential clothing grants are available for families where parents are in receipt of certain benefits or tax credits. All children in Primary 1 to Primary 3 are eligible for free school meals.

6. Bullying was measured by combining responses from questions asking children how often they experienced a range of bullying behaviours, such as how often other children picked on them by calling them names/leaving them out of games/chats and how often children were shoved, pushed/hit.

7. The Scottish Government's national approach to anti-bullying – Respect for All – defines bullying as both the behaviour itself and its impact. The GUS questionnaire, finalised before the national strategy was published, measured only experience of bullying behaviour and not impact. In addition, not all behaviours included in the national strategy are covered by the GUS data.

8. The cohort children are born over a 12 month period from June 2004 to May 2005. As a result they straddle two school year groups. Data collection was phased over two years to ensure all children were at the same school stage at the point of data collection.

9. For further details please see the User Guide accompanying the age 12/sweep 9 dataset, available from the UK Data Service.

10. Sweep 8 questionnaire: http://doc.ukdataservice.ac.uk/doc/5760/mrdoc/pdf/5760_data_documentation_cohort1_sweep8.pdf

11. Sweep 9 questionnaire: http://growingupinscotland.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/BC1-Sweep-9-Data-Documentation.pdf

12. See Appendix B, Tables 9-1 to 9-4 for a full list of response options.

13. The grouping together of generally positive or negative responses to create a longitudinal transition variable does not capture highest levels of positivity or lowest levels of negativity which were apparent in the cross sectional analysis.

14. The presence of an older sibling in the household was derived from banded age categories as included in the GUS data. It was therefore only possible to identify siblings who were 12 years old or older at P6. As the cohort children were aged around 10.5 years old at this sweep, use of the banded variable may have missed some older siblings.

15. For more information on SIMD see https://www.gov.scot/collections/scottish-index-of-multiple-deprivation-2020/

16. For more information on urban rural classification see https://www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-government-urban-rural-classification-2016/

17. See Appendix A for further details of how this measure was derived.

18. See Appendix A for further details of how this measure was derived.

19. See Appendix A for further details of how this measure was derived.

20. Bullying was selected as a proxy measure of peer relationships because the same question items were used at P6 and S1 thus allowing consideration of change in those relationships

21. See Appendix A for the full list of upsetting life events and the proportion of children who experienced them.

22. See section 2.4 for details of how this measure was constructed

23. Respect for All (Scottish Government, 2017) the Scottish Government's national approach to anti-bullying defines bullying behaviour as including: being called names, teased, put down or threatened face to face/online; being hit, tripped, pushed or kicked; being ignored, left out or having rumours spread about you (face-to-face and/or online); having belongings taken or damaged; sending abusive messages, pictures or images on social media, online gaming platforms or phone; behaviour which makes people feel like they are not in control of themselves or their lives (face-to-face and/or online); being targeted because of who you are or who you are perceived to be (face to face and/or online). The measures used here cover the first three of these behaviours.

24. Results are shown in Table 9‑5.

25. The terminology used by Scanlon et al. from Republic of Ireland is SEN which included Mild General Learning Disability (MGLD; N = 6); Moderate Learning Disability (MoGLD; N = 2); Emotional and Behavioural Disability (EBD; N = 1); Hearing Impairment (N = 2); Multiple Disabilities (N = 17); Assessed Syndrome (N = 7); Physical Disability (N = 1); and Specific Learning Disability (SLD; N = 5).

26. Note that, due to the banding of age categories in the dataset, in the primary school data it was not possible to identify older siblings who were under 12 years old. Therefore, the data on older siblings here refer to siblings who were aged 12 or over.

27. In addition to analysing transition experience by the presence of any additional support needs at S1, additional analyses were carried out to explore whether any new additional support needs being identified since P6 were associated with any additional differences in transition experience. However, the outcome of this analysis did not substantially differ from the findings reported for any existing additional support needs at S1.

28. See section 2.5 for details of how this measure was constructed.

29. The median score is the midpoint of the vocabulary scores recorded for the GUS children – i.e. half of the children will have recorded higher scores than this value, and half will have recorded lower scores than this value.

30. SDQ is a screening tool for 3-16 year olds which assessed four psychological attributes: emotional, conduct, hyperactivity and peer relationship disorders behavioural problems. Scores were summed to derive a total score which was then grouped into three categories normal/typical (0 to 13), borderline (14-17) and abnormal/atypical (18 or more) (Goodman, 1997

31. The Scottish Government's national approach to anti-bullying – Respect for All (Scottish Government, 2017) – defines bullying as both the behaviour itself and its impact. The GUS questionnaire, finalised before the national strategy was published, measured only experience of bullying behaviour and not impact. In addition, not all behaviours included in the national strategy are covered by the GUS data.

32. Note that an alternative analytical approach may produce different results.

33. A growth mindset is a belief that children's abilities can be developed (Dweck, 2017). Teachers can develop it in several ways, such as emphasising the learning process rather than the result, creating time for children to reflect on their learning, supporting children to learn from their mistakes rather than seeing them as failures etc.