CR spoke with Wayne Dixon

Wayne Dixon

This month, thousands of children across the UK will have started at secondary school; a change that many find daunting. Scripture Union publish It's Your Move!, a book designed to help children move to secondary school and enable churches to build relationships with their local schools. Rebecca Duffett spoke with Wayne Dixon, a Development Worker for Scripture Union in Schools based in Windsor, Slough and Maidenhead to find out more.

Rebecca: What are the main concerns for young people who are moving to secondary school?

Wayne: The main concerns are, for example, a few months ago I was in a little school in Cookham just outside Maidenhead. This group of 21 year six pupils would in a few months time be going to schools that have got populations of about a thousand or so. That's a massive change, just with the size factor and the age factor with lots of older kids in the school.

At the moment year sixes or in some parts of the country year seven are top of the school. They know their way around and are very familiar with everything. Yet in September they suddenly become the youngest and smallest, with the potential for things like bullying and nervousness and all those kinds of things.

Something like the book, It's Your Move, is a little attempt to give them some encouragement and practical advice. It especially compliments what the schools are already doing and sits alongside that quite nicely in my experience.

Rebecca: Is there much that youngsters can do to help the process themselves?

Wayne: Yes there is a great amount they can do. One is to articulate their genuine concerns and to articulate that to parents and other respected responsible adults for example youth workers, if they're part of churches or children's workers and certainly to their teachers.

When they go on visits, so usually around the first week of July, certainly around here we have what's known as transfer day, where all the year sixes go and visit their new school. That's not the first time they've been there, but it's another opportunity to spend maybe a half day getting familiar, maybe having lunch there and seeing a typical normal day.

Those kinds of experiences are invaluable. I would say that the number one thing is to ask questions about any concerns they've got, whether huge or small, so that they can be given the reassurance and the encouragement that they need.

Rebecca: What is the best thing for them about moving to a secondary school?

Wayne: One of the best things according to this survey that we did many years ago was that they were looking forward to making new friends. That was the top answer out of the three questions that they were asked; 43% said that they were looking forward to making new friends.

There are all sorts of other things. I was chatting to one lass here from this church who is making the move and she's looking forward to doing the wider range of activities and lessons particularly in the sporting arena.

As a generalisation, once you get to secondary school and if you're doing PE, there's an opportunity to do some sports that you might have not been able to do at primary school and maybe at a level and with either specialist staff or PE staff that can take it to a greater level. So I think things like that are big changes from what they're currently involved with.

Rebecca: On the other side of the coin what are the main things that youngsters have to let go of that's quite difficult and that they will miss?