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What percentage of Bishop Wilkinson Catholic Education Trust's secondary school pupils come from its own primary schools?
Around 70% of pupils in Bishop Wilkinson Catholic Education Trust's secondary schools come from the trust's own primary schools. Across 47 schools and four local authorities in the North East, this means the trust can follow a child's education continuously from age 3 right through to sixth form at age 18.
47 schools, one continuous journey from nursery to sixth form
Bishop Wilkinson Catholic Education Trust operates across all phases of schooling — nursery, primary, and secondary — serving around 12,000 children across four local authorities. With roughly 70% of secondary intake arriving from its own primaries, the trust holds something genuinely rare: deep, longitudinal knowledge of most of its pupils before they ever set foot in secondary school.
Graeme Finlay, speaking in Education: Joining the Dots, describes this as a "really unique opportunity to form the education of children right through their entire schooling." That continuity is not just an administrative convenience — it fundamentally changes what's possible for transition planning.
When a trust already holds years of assessment history on a child, the handover between primary and secondary is no longer a leap into the unknown. Diagnostic data — from tools like the NGRT (New Group Reading Test) or CAT4 — can be built up over time and shared across phases in a way that standalone schools simply cannot replicate.
What 70% internal intake actually means for transition in practice
For most schools, primary-to-secondary transition involves piecing together limited records from unfamiliar feeder schools. Bishop Wilkinson's position inverts that challenge for the majority of its cohort. Secondary teachers already have access to a child's learning journey — what they've studied, where they've excelled, and where they may struggle.
This context makes the kind of literacy and assessment-led transition model discussed in this episode especially powerful. Administering the NGRT to Year 6 pupils in May and June — with all diagnostic data available by mid-June, before the September start — allows secondary staff to act on real evidence rather than anecdotal handover notes.
The trust also hosts events like the Bishop Wilkinson Celebration of Sport at Gateshead Stadium, where primary and secondary pupils come together before transition. These are not peripheral gestures: they're part of a deliberate strategy to make the move feel familiar rather than foreign.
"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, School Improvement Team, Laidlaw Schools Trust.
Caralambos relocated to the North East in April after training and teaching English and Media at Ritchie Diver Secondary School in London. She comes from a bilingual household and first taught English in India at age 17 — an experience she credits with sparking her lifelong commitment to equity and literacy in education. At Laidlaw Schools Trust, she leads curriculum development and literacy improvement across 11 schools, many serving communities with high mobility, economic disadvantage, and in one West End Newcastle school, over 60 languages spoken among pupils. Her expertise in assessment-led transition, detailed further in Education: Joining the Dots, is shaped by working with some of the most linguistically diverse and underserved student populations in England.
While Caralambos speaks from the Laidlaw Schools Trust context, her advice applies directly to the Bishop Wilkinson model: the 70% internal intake figure only translates into better outcomes if schools actively use the data they have access to — early, systematically, and collaboratively across phases. As discussed throughout this podcast episode, having the structural advantage of a through-trust is only the starting point.
See also
What is the Standard Age Score (SAS) and why is it recommended for comparing reading assessment results across students?
The Standard Age Score (SAS) is the score recommended by GL Assessment when making comparisons across any norm-referenced test. It allows educators to compare students of different ages on a level footing, accounting for age-related differences in performance — making it the most reliable metric for tracking reading progress at transition.
How can CAT4 and NGRT be used together to support student transition and identify underachievement?
Georgina Cook and Emma Dibden explain that combining CAT4 verbal reasoning scores with NGRT reading results allows educators to compare a student's reading performance against their cognitive potential. This pairing helps identify pupils who are underachieving or whose needs might otherwise go unnoticed at the point of transition.
What advice do transition programme leaders give to educators building their own primary-to-secondary literacy transition plan?
Graeme Finlay advises careful liaison with GL Assessment over several months to design a reading strategy before identifying tools, and stresses the importance of involving staff early. Aligning digital assessment tools to transition work, he argues, can be genuinely transformational for schools starting from scratch.
Key takeaways
- Around 70% of Bishop Wilkinson Catholic Education Trust's secondary pupils come from the trust's own primary schools — one of the highest internal intake rates among multi-academy trusts in England.
- The trust spans 47 schools across four local authorities in the North East, serving around 12,000 children from age 3 through to sixth form at age 18.
- This level of internal intake creates a structural advantage for transition planning — but it only delivers better outcomes when paired with active, assessment-led data sharing across phases.
- Diagnostic tools like the NGRT, administered in May and June with results available by mid-June, allow secondary staff to act on pupil data before the September start — turning structural advantage into real readiness.