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Helping young people with additional support needs to make a successful transition: evaluating and improving practice

Section 1

Perth College

Introduction
About Moving On:

Helping young people with additional support needs to make a successful transition: evaluating and improving practice

Moving On has been written for the purpose of disseminating and promoting good practice in the work of schools and further education (FE) colleges with young people who:

• are coming to the end of the their secondary schooling;
• might consider going to an FE college for further education and training; but
• need some additional support in transferring to college and sustaining attendance there.

It should be read in the context of the Beattie Committee Report.¹ This report identified a number of issues, of which the following are most relevant to the content of Moving On.

• One of the major barriers experienced by young people and their parents in the transition from school to further education and training, and in subsequent transitions, is the lack of effective communication between agencies.
• Young people and their parents/carers require access to high quality guidance and support to enable them to make the transition from school to post-school education and training.
• Young people also require ready accessible ongoing guidance and support to assist them with subsequent transitions.
• How to promote action across all agencies to address factors that contribute to effective assessment; and how to ensure that the assessment leads to matching provision.

These issues raised in the Beattie Committee Report are underlined by previous HMI inspection and review evidence from schools and colleges, which told us the following.

• Young people were not always given the information and advice they needed about suitable options after leaving school.
• The support arrangements made in schools were not readily available once students went to college.
• Some young people and their parents did not realise what colleges could offer.
• Some young people who started college programmes did not get enough support to settle in and progress, so they dropped out.

Moving On uses the findings of an investigation by HM Inspectors. We initially looked at the way two schools/college groupings supported transition to find out more about what was needed and what worked well. We found that good arrangements were underpinned by certain general principles. We identified certain characteristics of good practice which were present in most good transition arrangements. We then went on to visit a number of other schools and colleges which had built some of these characteristics into their arrangements, to see how they worked in practice.

Moving On:

• identifies the principles which underpin effective arrangements for supporting young people through the transition from school to college
• describes and illustrates the key characteristics which appear in good practice
• gives case studies of good practice in putting these characteristics into action
• provides a format for schools, colleges and wider professional networks to evaluate how well they support transition in their local context.

Who will use Moving On?

We hope that schools, colleges and others will use Moving On to improve the experience of young people going from school to college. People who will find it useful include:

• headteachers and staff of secondary schools and special schools where there are pupils with additional support needs who would benefit from moving on to an FE college
• principals and staff of colleges which receive students with additional support needs
• careers advisers/officers, social workers, other professionals working with the young people, and relevant local networks
• people offering advice and support to the young people in a voluntary capacity
• parents and other agencies, who might use it to inform themselves about standards and activities expected in schools and colleges, and as an aid to exploring what are the best arrangements for the young people for whom they have responsibilities.

How can Moving On be used?

Schools and colleges should use Moving On to:

• develop their thinking on transition arrangements, by discussing the best practices illustrated
• evaluate their own practice, using the suggested activities in conjunction with their self-evaluation based on How good is our school?² and the SFEFC/HMIE Quality Framework³
• improve their practice in collaboration with other schools and colleges and with the wider professional network.

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