A transition is not a transition if it stops before you arrive. How can SEND learners be supported through change?

Transitions don’t need to be fancy, clever or costly. However, they must be continuous, expected and steady for the long-haul to be successful. We can have a tendency to make transitions for young people more complicated than necessary. Simplicity is not something we’re encouraged to lean on when it comes to making social-emotional progress possible for the young people we support.

An aversion to simplicity can sometimes lead us to worry that if we don’t make a noise about our best-intended initiatives for children, their milestones won’t be evident. Our peers might not think that we did our very best for our learners because the plan only required two sides of A4. We can fall victim to making our strategic initiatives look difficult on paper because we don’t actually know what will work best, so we chuck everything we’ve got at them and hope for the best. A great starter question when preparing for any transition is “Am I making this more difficult than it needs to be?”.

Missing pieces.

A transition cannot be completed if parts are missing along the way.

It’s that time in the academic year when we’re thinking about how best to organise transition efforts: Year 11’s moving into their Post 16 choices; Year 6 moving into Year 7 and their secondary setting; Year 9 finding their way into their Year 10 and GCSE options... Actually this list could go on - Which made me stop to think about the transitions we’re all making, often, and how they can be more likely to be successful for the long term, and how we’ve seen them made less likely to succeed even though so well intended on paper.

The best transitions are quiet, simple and do not go away before the first step into a new place is taken; whilst the first step is being taken; or even some time later when progress and more confident steps are made. It’s that simple: Stay with learners THROUGH a transition and INTO their next place, never going away suddenly but only gently stepping back, once a secure grounding has been established and is ready to start settling in on its own. That is top-notch transition support and requires all of the adults being able to work together to facilitate a soft landing.

BCE is an Alternative Education Provision for SEND learners who struggle/have struggled to belong in their setting/s. Some of our learners will join our education offer because their previous transitions have been unsuccessful, sometimes due to mental health issues. This is why I’m thinking deeply about how our unique learners now have a great deal more hurdles than many to understand and work with, if they’re to transition successfully from a placement with us onto their next steps in future. It’s our job at BCE to make that knowing and understanding simple, steady and never disruptive for our learners and their future transitions.

In guidance relating to transitions for learners moving from AP to Post-16 destinations, the word ‘should’ dominates. “Saying ‘should’ is like having an argument with reality.” (I May Be Wrong, Bjorn Natthiko Lindeblad, 2020). ‘Should’ is simply acknowledging that something does not happen but we wish it did. All of this should-ding is well intended however, there are limited ‘must’s’ when it comes to who is responsible for what once a young person is no longer of compulsory school age - unless they have an EHCP. Where does this leave those without a Plan? Mostly NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) often within 6 months of collecting their GCSE results, if they were able to sit any exams.

“Great changes are not easy, they arise to inspire your growth.”

— Yung Pueblo

NEET statistics could be partly attributed to the fact that to the Department for Education ‘Should = Not Mandatory and Must = Mandatory’. The limitations crushing leaders and innovators mean that it’s hard to know who is responsible for the final outcome. Statutory duties (the ‘must’ for local authorities) to capture risk factor data for those likely to become NEET and ensuring every young person at least receives a Post-16 offer by September, is a valuable step, yet it doesn’t build the bridge to take that step onto.

Wouldn’t it be simple if someone was given the autonomy and means to build the bridge and give our learners the time and flexibility required to cross it safely, so that there is just no gap between June of Year 11 and September of Year 12? I’m sure I’m not the only Designated Safeguarding Lead who experiences the most sleepless nights when young people are in that limbo of ‘Not Year 11 anymore but not Year 12 yet either’ every July and August.

As a parent, leader, professional, person, I’m sitting here listing all of the transitions my students, family, friends and colleagues face this month alone. They’re not unusual but are numerous, varied, inevitable, unpredictable and mind-boggling.

How to support transitions.

How can we help with all of the transitions our children and learners are looking at?

1. Stillness

   • There’s no point in you also being emotionally activated by an uncertainty which someone you know is already feeling ungrounded by. If you mirror their feelings of uncertainty you are not being sympathetic you are adding to the weight of it. Instead, try to be still and be prepared to help if it’s wanted.

2. Find out

   • Information means understanding which is exactly what a person going through transition could do with - to be understood and for their key adults to be well informed, equipped to place their hand on the facts needed to help with moving things along steadily. Do some research, hold some helpful facts, be well informed about the possibilities.

3. Listen

   • You can’t just fix it much as you’d like to and you can’t make a person skip through the feelings which changes are generating for them. Listen and acknowledge that: Yes, this is hard. No, I won’t cut you off mid-feeling.

4. Reduce Choice

   • We offer multiple possibilities when we want to be helpful without being overbearing. Yet, the fog created by too much choice is overbearing. A person who is stepping into a change has one choice, that is to step into a change. No need to confuse matters and make the issue muddy with multiple options. Guide a person through by questioning instead of telling, so that they can arrive at a best made plan which was constructed themselves. Ownership is vital for changes to be successful and long-lasting.

5. Trigger-Stacking

   • Trigger-Stacking is where something which felt pretty daunting but you were managing through, is then added to with another something which also seems daunting. This action makes the first thing feel greater in weight than it had done before. When you add to a persons stack you make the things underneath it feel heavier and heavier. Linked to choice-overload (above) you risk trigger-stacking when a person is already feeling emotionally activated. By adding another element to be concerned with when they are managing to focus on the first, you risk them cutting plans in their tracks or cutting you out of their safety net. Be steady and measured by supporting them through lifting one brick of the plan at a time. Don’t forget to sincerely celebrate each time a brick is lifted no matter how small, you, thought it was.

6. Countdown

   • There’s an inevitability that comes with a countdown no matter how old you are. When someone invested in our journey also provides us with a countdown, we know they care but we also know that they mean business. My thirteen year old was on the naughty step at least four times a day when she was little. She may have switched steps when I wasn’t looking, but she stayed on their stairs until my countdown reached zero every time. My diabetic 15 year old struggles to apply his sensor to his upper arm every ten days, yet when I count him down to zero he just goes Zap, done, no hesitation. Countdown is a most useful helper when it comes to preparing for and then actioning transitions. It’s like magic when used wisely. Be visual with your countdowns, be repetitive, be predictable, and stick with it. As with so many things, consistency is key but I would say that continuity is even more valuable.

If you’d like to talk about the suggestions above please go ahead and book a free discovery call.

To find out about our Post-16 offer or how we can support students in Years 9, 10, 11, please get in touch.

Beyond Creative Education is an independent education provider which means we are able to accept referral requests from anyone supporting a child or young person. Parents, carers, schools, agencies and local authority officers are all able to refer to our independent service.

A transition is not a transition if it stops before you arrive.

Sources:

From Dame Rachel de Souza, Children’s Commissioner, its reported that ‘Nearly a third (29%) of children in Alternative Provision did not sustain a positive destination after leaving in Year 11. This compares to 5.2% of children from mainstream schools who did not sustain a positive destination. However, too often, secondary-aged children remained in AP until the end of Year 11 without clear plans for the most suitable post-16 pathway and provider, or for how to achieve their goals. They needed further careers guidance.’

(An Alternative Route - Children’s Commissioner, May 2024).

The DfE’s thematic review of alternative provision in local areas said that ‘Support for young people, once they had entered post-16 provision, was not consistent. We saw some good practice, such as APs running a transition service that supported pupils for 2 years after they left the provision. However, there is often a lack of clarity around who had oversight for these young people. Support tended to stop at the point of the young person’s entry to post-16 provision. One parent described this as ‘a sense of a cliff edge’. Sometimes, it felt abrupt when support from professionals who had been working with children and young people stopped. Some young people were unable to sustain their placement. Generally, children on longer-term placements were more likely to have suitable support for next steps planning and transition to post-16 than those on shorter-term placements.‘

(Alternative Provision in local areas: A thematic review, DfE, February 2024)

‘If the placement does not end with reintegration into the school – for example, when a child reaches the end of Y11 while still in alternative provision – the provider and home school, if appropriate, should have a plan in place to secure a successful destination into further education, training or employment.‘

(Arranging Alternative Provision, DfE, February 2025)