Step up to Secondary
At a glance:
Is your child approaching the transition to secondary school or have they started secondary this academic year?
Are they feeling anxious or overwhelmed by the demands of the secondary curriculum?
Do they need strategies to help them work more independently?
Develop key study skills to:
Make the secondary curriculum more manageable
Avoid common pitfalls
Support confidence and success
£540 for 9 unit programme with Step up to Secondary Year 6 (P7) or Step up to Secondary Year 7 (S1). Each unit includes:
Video preparation lessons to work through at your own pace
Quizzes and a task to complete
Feedback
Live online lesson in a small group to develop and secure the skill
Dyslexia-friendly study skills to smooth the move to secondary and beyond.
It’s never too early to start developing study skills which will support students on their journey through education, employment and life.
The transition from primary to secondary school is a really exciting time. New and developing subjects bring stimulating opportunities and challenges. However, confidence is often fragile and easily dented.
Starting to develop a toolkit of study skills helps students to reduce stress whilst increasing their confidence and effectiveness as a learner.
It takes time for students to learn the right study skills, use them independently and then transfer them across their subjects. Securing vital study skills before they start learning exam course content saves time and frustration whilst developing their confidence and independence as learners.
What does Step up to Secondary cover?
Step up to Secondary develops essential study skills in 9 core units organised across 3 modules:
Organisationally, it’s an enormous change and one that trips many students up early on. Strategies to support organisation and homework whilst developing independence make a huge difference to students and parents.
Effective listening is an area of high challenge for many students. It can become a vicious circle as they’re worrying about what they need to do next rather than listening carefully and then don’t know what to do next.
Developing a growth mindset, so that students understand that progress is always possible, has a huge impact on their confidence and resilience. We start exploring strategies to support memory as we prove the potential of a growth mindset. Memory and revision are challenging areas for all of us. After all, who wouldn’t like to improve their memory?! Rather than just focusing on strategies to support memory for exams, it’s best to begin weaving these strategies in as early as we can. This helps students to use them independently and transfer them to new areas.
Skimming and scanning helps students to focus on essential information and save vital time.
How can you use broader strategies to support your understanding of a text before you've even read it?
A key skill for all study, jobs and life is to be able to fully understand what you’ve read. However, this is often a
challenge if text has to be read several times for understanding, tricky vocabulary causes confusion and the key messages are missed. Strategies are needed to ensure their reading comprehension helps rather than hinders their success.
Organising written work is a difficult skill for many students. Planning is often seen as an optional extra rather than an important foundation. There are many planning structures which need to be taught explicitly to help students choose the right structure for a task and use it successfully.
Equally, transforming a plan into effective written work is a tricky step and can be overwhelming. Study skills help students to conquer the blank page block whilst sharing their ideas more effectively to engage an audience.
Editing and proofreading are skills which need to be expicitly taught and rehearsed in order for students to see their impact and be able to use them independently in assessments and examinations. It makes everyone's life easier when they're able to apply them to their homework rather than relying on your input!
How does Step up to Secondary work?
The courses are organised into three modules with three units in each module. Each of the nine units provide:
Video lessons to introduce and develop each study skill for the students:
Work through the videos whenever it suits them.
Work at their own pace.
Repeat sections as necessary.
Activities such as games and quizzes to engage and check understanding are marked automatically.
A task to complete and submit:
Receive video feedback talking them through exactly what they’ve done well and precise recommendations for improvement.
Personalised and motivating without any reading barriers.
Email support for any queries.
An online live group lesson to follow their preparatory videos and tasks:
Very small group of like-minded students.
Learning on each core study skill is further developed and enhanced.
Pdf of the key learning from each unit as an ongoing reminder
Booking now for October 2026:
Step up to Secondary Year 6
Step up to Secondary Year 7
Interested in Step up to Secondary?
Please register interest to book a 'phone call.
Questions
Group lessons give students a great opportunity to share tips and ideas, listen to questions that they hadn’t thought of and bounce ideas off each other. It’s more fun and enhances confidence to see we’re all in the same boat. Equally, motivation and independence are increased in well supported small groups. This helps students to take charge of their developing tool kit of study skills.
The live lessons are recorded (without showing the students) so you can always catch up or even watch them again after your course is completed to refresh your study skills.
You will have access to the course resources for six months so you can revisit and refresh. The handy pdf summarising the key learning of each unit is ideal to keep to hand for homework and revision.
You can also dip in and out of the course videos and live lesson recordings so that you’re able to prompt, remind and support in future.