Curriculum design at Key Stage 3: Supporting primary to secondary school transition

VICTORIA COOK, LEAD RESEARCHER, CHARTERED COLLEGE OF TEACHING, UK This article was produced as part of a project funded by the Comino Foundation. Introduction A 2015 Ofsted report entitled ‘Key Stage 3: The wasted years?’ concluded that Key Stage 3 needs to become a higher priority for secondary school leaders, to ensure that the time is used effectively to develop students’ learning. In particular, the report painted a varied landscape with regard to transition arrangements from primary to secondary schools. While examples of effective collaboration between primary and secondary schools were identified, inspectors concluded that students’ prior learning was not being sufficiently built upon in many secondary schools, with repetition of work completed in primary school: From the start of Year 7, teachers’ expectations of what pupils can achieve are often too low. This can have a detrimental effect on the rate at which they make progress during the first years of their se