With less than a week to go until most schools in Hertfordshire open their doors again to pupils for the Autumn term, many of you will already be doing transition work and back to school preparation with your children.
As we highlight in our Back to School transition tips, now is also a good time to update or complete a pupil passport you can share with your child’s new teacher(s). Pupil Passports are essentially summary documents about your child and are often called one-page profiles as they work best if all the information fits on one side of A4.
They can be easily shared with teachers and other staff who come into contact with your child so they can quickly get the key information they need to be able to best support them. They can be really helpful for both young people and teaching staff, especially at the start of a new school year.
They don’t have to be beautifully formatted and there is no definitive template – it can include their likes, dislikes, their favourite things, how teachers can help them if they struggle etc.
Involve your child as much as possible when completing a one page profile. It can often be surprising what we can learn as well!
Your school may have already given you or your young person a template to fill in but if not, this is what we would recommend as a minimum to be tailored with your child:
- Your child’s name
- Your child’s photograph
- “I would like you to know that…” do this in the first person and involve your child as much as possible
- “This means that…” again, in the first person
- “I find it difficult to…” a summary of key areas discussed with your child
- “It would help me if you could…” a quick list of strategies that you know can help your child
- “I will help myself by…” self-help strategies agreed with your child
- Additional support – eg provisions / interventions already in place