Changing Schools: Handing Over the File

When your child changes schools, hand over the thread yourself rather than assuming it travels automatically. Gather recent reports, your school log summary, and any current letters or plans into one tidy pack, and write a one-page introduction covering strengths, what helps day to day, and what is currently in place. Share it with the new school at the point they indicate, introduce yourself early as in the first conversation with a new teacher, and keep your own copies of everything. Schools do pass records on, but timing and completeness vary, and your pack ensures the new teacher starts with the useful picture from week one. The wider system is in talking to school.

Keep the pack recent and readable. Include the last year or two of school reports, your one-page summary, a short extract from your log showing what has been tried and what helped, and copies of any current formal letters or plans relating to your child. Add practical facts a new school needs quickly: who collects your child, relevant contact numbers, and any regular appointments that affect the school week, shared in plain terms. Leave out old correspondence about settled disagreements and anything about other children. The test for each page is whether it helps a new teacher help your child this term. If a page fails that test, file it at home instead.

Keep your own set of copies permanently, even after the move settles. Files have a way of being needed again: at the next transition, in a review a year later, or when a new teacher asks what was tried in the previous school. Store the pack in one labelled folder at home, add the new school's first report and your new log pages to it each term, and it becomes a continuous record across schools that no single institution holds. That continuity is genuinely valuable, and it costs nothing beyond a folder, a habit, and ten minutes at the end of each term.

Ask the new school when and to whom the pack should go; many have a named person for new starters and a preferred moment, often after places are confirmed and before the first day. If there is a transition visit, that is a natural time to hand over a copy and to ask how the school would like to stay in touch during the first half term. Tell the current school about the move in writing once it is confirmed, thanking them and asking when records will be sent on. Tell your child, in the calm pattern of talking to your child about school meetings, what will happen and what will stay the same, such as the log and the routines at home.

Records sometimes lag behind the child. If the new teacher has not seen key information after the first fortnight, offer your copies politely rather than assuming anyone has failed; your pack exists for exactly this gap. Early weeks at a new school often wobble for ordinary reasons: new routes, new faces, new rules. Keep the log running, note what settles and what does not, and ask for a short review meeting after four to six weeks rather than judging the move in week one. If something that was in place before has not carried over, raise it factually, with your summary in hand, and ask how the new school approaches the same need.

As an illustration, a family moving towns in July assembles a pack: two reports, a one-page summary, three log pages showing that a morning warning before timetable changes helps, and a short note about collection arrangements. They hand it to the new school office at the transition visit, addressed to the year leader as the school requested. In September the new teacher mentions the timetable warning in the first week, unprompted, because she read the summary. The illustration shows the point of the parent-held pack: not bureaucracy, but one useful fact arriving before it was needed.

Schools change; your records are the continuity. A tidy pack, an early introduction and a patient first half term give a new school the best possible start with your child, and give your child the feeling that the important things about them travelled safely too.