School leaders, Kirsten Wilson and Gordon Parrish, discuss how the Peer Support Program equips their Year 6 students with the confidence and skills to transition into a much larger and more complex school environment. Year 6 student, Bridie, feels confident about starting high school next year.
Kirsten Wilson, Assistant Principal: I’m Kristen Wilson. I’m the Assistant Principal at Robertson Public School. I really think the Peer Support Program helps our Year 6 students get ready for high school.
It equips them with a lot of leadership skills and strategies that will support (them) when they’re in high school, especially things like organisation. So running a Peer Support lesson, you’ve got to be really well organised, and I think as they go into high school they’re going to need those organisational skills on an everyday basis there.
It gives them an opportunity to learn to communicate with other people; and communication in high school, especially for our students who come from a small rural school, to give them an opportunity to communicate with other people, so when they get to a high school they have more confidence to talk to other teachers the other students that are around them. So great for organisation, great communicating, collaborating with other people, teamwork with a variety of students from different ages and backgrounds.
Bridie, Peer Leader: I’m very excited to start high school. I’ve learned a lot of new things for high school, like people are going to be kind. And I’m going to be learnt to more organised because (for the past) couple of weeks I haven’t been very organised. But it’s good to be organised with like other things.
Gordon Parrish, Principal: Being a Peer Support Leader in a primary school does give them a good foot into starting high school with a lot more confidence. Those kids that often would have been perhaps a little bit in the background have had the chance to come through and shine and find strength that they perhaps didn’t know they had. And that helps them transition into high school. It makes them a lot more confident as individuals. It gives them some strategies on how to solve any issues, or perhaps some conflict in the future, (like) how to deal with trickier situations and it helps them navigate their way into high school and have a better transition.
