Preschool reports to help ease chidren's move to primary

By Niall Murray, Education Correspondent

Children starting primary school next year will be helped to settle in by reports from pre-schools to infant teachers about their interests and skills.

As around 68,000 children prepare to start junior infants this week and next, reporting templates for pre-school providers are being finalised by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) to help give schools a clear picture about their incoming pupils next year.

“We’re trying to generate as clear a picture as we can about what is of interest to a child, their strengths, and areas they find a bit more difficult,” said NCCA deputy chief executive Arlene Forster.

They try to give a sense of what really captures the interest of a child, things that might be helpful for a teacher to help the child settle in.

The plan is to have them available to early childhood care and education (ECCE) providers later this year, with a view to being used in a transition process that begins some months before a child finishes pre-school.

The content of the sample reporting templates has been agreed but details about the method of sharing have to be finalised out in accordance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which came into effect in May. Parents will have to approve the sending of any information about their children by their ECCE provider to the school in which their child is due to enrol the following term.

A play-based curriculum spans the time spent by children in ECCE settings and two infant years of primary school. Infant teachers should get details in the reports about individual pupils’ skills, knowledge, and understanding under themes linked to primary curriculum subjects, which may help them to better plan activities for their incoming infants in September.

The Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) said it very much welcomes reporting templates as one way of supporting the transition to primary school.

However, INTO general secretary Sheila Nunan said that, while they can be a useful tool for teachers to start conversations with parents about skills and experiences that best support children, other elements are required for a successful move.

Any templates used should be optional, useful and user-friendly, and shouldn’t create unnecessary additional paperwork or administrative burdens for teachers,” she said.

“Continuity of experiences in terms of curriculum and pedagogy across the early years would also support children embarking on this educational journey.”

The design of the reports has been helped by an NCCA pilot with nine pre-schools and eight primary schools in Galway, Laois, Limerick, and Tipperary. They worked with families and teachers to help children experience a positive transition to primary school, with an emphasis on positive relationships between both settings.

Pre-school practitioners visited junior infant classrooms at the schools their young learners would be attending, and pre-school children got to visit their new schools and take part in activities there.

Parents attended joint information sessions to hear about differences and similarities between pre-school and primary school, and to learn ways of preparing their children for the move. In some cases, junior infants teachers visited pre-schools to learn more about children’s experiences and learning there.