For a whole year, students in Year 6 are given their own lockers and diaries to prepare them for the expectations of Year Seven.
“It’s very similar to high school,” said Josie Vescio, the Principal. “Students are also given assignments and have an exam week, to mimic the high school environment.
“It’s all about organisation,” Mrs Vescio said. “We want them to be organised. They can deal with forgetting their locker combination in a familiar space, before they get to the new environment of high school.”
“High schools have different expectations to the primary setting, and we found that when they started in Year Seven this could be quite daunting,” Mrs Vescio said. “We did a lot of consultation and research around expectations of high school and we thought, we’re doing the students a disservice by not preparing them.”
Danielle Fleming, whose son Darcy was in the transition program last year, said that the skills he learnt in the program set him up with the confidence and ability to negotiate high school. “The transition has been seamless,” she said. “I think that it’s a wonderful program and a must for every school.”
St Rose consulted with St Paul’s Catholic College School in Manly to deliver the programme and this is the first year the school is including Year Fives in the program, after the success of running the program for Year Sixes last year.