How does the Bishop Wilkinson Catholic Education Trust structure its primary-to-secondary transition programme?
Bishop Wilkinson Catholic Education Trust begins transition as early as the end of Year 5, with a large community event called the Bishop Wilkinson Celebration of Sport, held at Gateshead Stadium and bringing together Year 5 children from all 42 of the trust's primary schools. Throughout Year 6, contextual data — including attendance records, special educational needs information, and reading results — is shared systematically between primary and secondary schools. Then, after SATs, Year 6 pupils sit the NGRT (New Group Reading Test) in their primary school over a three-week window in May and June, ensuring all initial diagnostic data is ready by mid-June, months before the September secondary start.
The phased approach is deliberately front-loaded. By launching transition at the sport event in Year 5, the trust gives children their first shared experience across school boundaries before formal academic transfer even begins. This matters at scale: Bishop Wilkinson Catholic Education Trust spans 47 schools across all phases, serving around 12,000 children across four local authorities in the North East of England, and approximately 70% of secondary school pupils come from the trust's own primaries — meaning the trust has the relational infrastructure to make rich data-sharing work in practice.
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1End of Year 5 — Bishop Wilkinson Celebration of Sport A whole-trust event at Gateshead Stadium unites Year 5 children from all 42 primary schools, building cross-school familiarity before Year 6 begins.
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2Throughout Year 6 — Contextual data sharing Attendance records, SEND information, and reading results move from primary schools to their receiving secondaries, building a picture of every child ahead of transfer.
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3May–June of Year 6 — NGRT administered in primary After SATs, pupils sit the NGRT in their own primary school over a three-week window. All diagnostic reading data is available to secondary teams by mid-June — giving schools the summer to plan targeted support before September.
The timing of the NGRT is a deliberate design choice: by running it after SATs, the test does not add pressure to an already high-stakes period, yet the three-week window ensures results land with secondary schools while there is still time to act. This approach — detailed in the episode Education: Joining the Dots, alongside Talia Caralambos from Laidlaw Schools Trust — positions diagnostic assessment not as a reactive measure but as the foundation on which transition planning is built.
"Don't wait until a child is failing to act. You need to diagnose on entry, involve staff from the start, and if you're fortunate enough to have digital tools that you can access, align that to your transition work, because it can be transformational."
— Talia Caralambos, Director of English, Laidlaw Schools Trust
About Talia Caralambos
Talia Caralambos relocated to the North East in April after training and teaching English and Media at Ritchie Diver Secondary School in London — an experience she credits with shaping her conviction that language is one of the most powerful tools available to young people, especially those still finding their voice. Her commitment to literacy as a lever for equity was sparked even earlier: she taught English in India at 17, an experience she describes as the origin of her lifelong belief in education as a route out of disadvantage. Coming from a bilingual household herself, Caralambos brings both personal and professional insight to multilingual and high-mobility school communities. As Director of English within the School Improvement team at Laidlaw Schools Trust, she works across 11 schools — including settings where over 60 languages are spoken and where economic disadvantage is a daily reality for many families. Her role focuses on curriculum development and literacy improvement, and her approach to transition is grounded in a core principle: every child's needs should be visible and acted upon before they ever set foot in a secondary classroom.
See also
Talia Caralambos argues that reading is "the biggest and most important barrier to academic success, and actually the biggest barrier to all success." Given the high levels of mobility, economic disadvantage, and linguistic diversity across Laidlaw schools, placing literacy — and early reading assessment — at the heart of transition was a deliberate strategic decision to ensure every child's needs were visible from day one in secondary school.
Laidlaw Schools Trust uses the NGRT (New Group Reading Test) as an early diagnostic within its Year 6 to Year 7 transition programme. The NGRT reading data is gathered before pupils arrive in secondary school, giving teachers actionable information about every incoming child's literacy level from the very first day of term.