Creating transition statements using the KTS app

Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the session this afternoon on creating transition statements using the KTS app.

Acknowledgment of Country
Before we begin, we would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners and custodians of the lands on which we meet today. We pay our respects to their Elders and their descendants who continue cultural and spiritual connections to Country, and we extend that respect to Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander people here today. We thank them for sharing their cultures and spiritualities and recognise the important contribution of this knowledge to our understanding of this place that we call home.

Introduction
For those of you not familiar with the kindergarten team here at QCAA, let me introduce you to the team. My name is Janis. I am one of the officers here. My colleagues, Stacey and Kelly are also our early childhood experts within our authority at the moment. Our contact information is on screen. I'll share this with you again at the end of the session because I know sometimes it's hard to grab and process when you first jump in. So, we'll share that again and our role is to support you as you implement the QKLG, and you're planning and assessing for children's learning. And at this time of the year, it's that focus on assessing and creating a transition statement, which is what we'll be talking about today.

Learning goals and success criteria
So in terms of our goal for this afternoon, we're really going to develop an understanding of transition statements and how to create them, in the transition statement application that has just been updated to support children's continuity of learning and transition into school, I'm going to give you a quiet moment just to have a look at the success criteria, those ideas of how we're going to achieve that goal this afternoon together.

Webinar outline
So with that success criteria, it has shaped our outline for the afternoon. So, we're really going to focus on supporting transition to Prep, what that means, how a QKLG does that. Also, how we go about describing children's learning and development in a transition statement for the purpose of supporting transition. And then what we'll focus on is some of those changes in the app and how we use the app to actually create that transition statement. So a lot to get through this afternoon and we're going to start with supporting transition to Prep.

Kindergarten, transition and school in Queensland
When we're thinking about that journey of children's learning, we know that in that birth to five age range, we have a national framework, our early years learning framework. Our QKLG is our state-based, our jurisdictional document that is closely aligned to an EYLF but provides the specificity for learning in that in that kindergarten phase. It values the learning that supports children become those confident and creative lifelong learners and as they move into that next step of their learning in Prep. So there's a really important intersection there, that point of transition where prior to school experiences and kindergarten expertise leading into school can really support that to be a smooth and successful process for children.

Kindergarten and transition
But when we think about the importance of that QKLG and the learning and development that is supporting lifelong learning as well as that continuity and transition, our transition statement is very closely linked and aligned to our QKLG learning and development and our continua of learning and development. It's how we show the learning that we have been assessing and gathering evidence of throughout kindergarten at a point in time as they get ready to go on to school.

Transition statements
What we know about transition statements is that they're strengths-based.

They're a snapshot that summarises learning and development at a point in time, and that one shared point in time is transition to school across all kindergartens.

They include input from parents, carers and children, and I could see from a lot of the comments and practices you were sharing that there's that ongoing communication and understanding between you as the kindergarten teacher and the families and children around those expectations and ways of creating those relationships and familiarisation into the new learning environment.

Now the purpose of our transition statement is to support transition and to support continuity of learning. So all of that information shared has that very particular purpose. It's not an archive or record of their entire year with you. It serves a purpose, and you'd make professional judgments about the information you share to meet that purpose.

And they are highly valued by parents, carers and schools to support those conversations and understandings of children as learners as they move into the next part of their learning journey.

Strengths-based approach
Now, strengths-based can sometimes be a little bit contentious, with people asking lots of questions about, well, does strengths-based mean that I just have to write something that's positive about a child?

Kathryn Hopps has written a wonderful article for us that describes a strengths-based perspective when writing transition statements, and she talks to that it's about identifying those strengths and capabilities of children at the point in time. But also acknowledging that there may have been challenges along the way that have been supported through your teaching strategies, learning situations and environments to enable those capabilities. So it's a real a really strong way of valuing and recognising children as competent and capable learners within the context of how they're learning and the support that's provided.

That is on our website and I recommend you having a look if you're very if you're interested in thinking about that strengths-based perspective a little bit more deeply.

Webinar outline
So we know that we have a QKLG that supports us with our work with children moving into school and we do that - one way we do that, you had many lovely practices that you were describing as you came in - one way we do that is through sharing information and describing learning and development in a transition statement.

Describing learning and development Now transition statements are not separate to or other than the work that you do across the year. So you are assessing and documenting children's learning throughout the year and you take that at that point in time, to do your assessment of learning. You're looking at what you know about children through your evidence and through your knowledge that you have built, and you're reviewing that to make some professional judgments around those strengths, capabilities, situations and supports.

Learning and development
We'll have a look at what that means for a transition statement when we talk about making those judgments and reviewing learning. So in a transition statement in the learning and development areas, you will see that it's broken into two parts. You have that first paragraph, which is your continua of learning and development judgments that you make about capabilities demonstrated at that point in time. You then also have the section where you get to describe what those capabilities look like for an individual with the strategies and supports that have enabled their success. So we can see how those two parts of the strengths based perspective come together here where we talk about capabilities along with situations and supports.

We're going to start by considering how we make those continua judgments of learning and development.

Making continua judgments
We know that we have the continua represented in each learning and development area by the three phases, so the significant learnings are broken down into those observable learnings, those details that we observe by the end of kindergarten. The knowledge, the skills, the dispositions within the context of the learning situation and the level of support. So if we think about this specific Communicating significant learning, we can consider those observable learnings and what we might look for in evidence gathered to make a judgement about which phase a child's learning is more like.

The yellow highlighting on this slide shows how the significant learning can be seen through those observable learnings in each phase. So we see that language of understanding or using language around shapes, positions and directions. So that's a little bit more detail about those shapes and what those spatial relationships might be.

So we know that's the learning we're looking for children to demonstrate and when we think about that within the context of the situation or the level of support, the examples that are in the continua can help us to see that and think about what that might look like in our own contexts. So we see language about learning situation, about objects and specific environmental pieces that are familiar or new to children, and also that level of support. What might explicit support look like in this example of emerging. It looks like it's an explicit description by an adult moving through scaffolding to an infrequent prompt. We also see that there's greater specificity about the capability in the situation and the support that's provided.

So what I want us to do now is actually think about that Communicating learning and development area that we just had a look at and were thinking about and we're going to take an example, see if we can use that continuum knowledge, and use it to make a judgment at a point in time. So what we've got is some snapshots of evidence that we're going to read through and see what we can learn about Penelope and her capabilities and the situation and support. So please don't try and read it from the screen right now. That is far too small, just to give you a little cue that we're going to be working through an example. So we will take each one, we'll review that, we'll think about what that means and then we'll try and get to which phase Penelope's learning is more like. So as we're working through, it would help to be paying attention for those markers that we just looked at, that knowledge, skill, disposition, of the capability, what's the language around situation and support.

Let's have a look at our first piece of evidence that's going to help us get to a judgment. I'm going to read these out for accessibility today in case you do have a screen that's quite small or it makes it difficult to read. Penelope uses a range of planned strategies to navigate the indoor and outdoor environment, such as peer support, her cane, wayfinding cues and tactile signs. For example, I know it's the reading area because there is carpet. My Braille books are on the top shelf, it has a bumpy edge. I can ask Jamie to help me find things.

Give you just a moment to have a think about and look for some of those, that language and information that will help us get to our judgment.

We’ll have a look at the next piece and again, I'll read this one out. In a small group situation, Penelope completed the shape inset puzzles with teacher prompting to feel and to describe attributes of the shape in the insets, for example round. Like a box. Then, with encouragement to persist, she located the puzzle pieces that matched what she could feel.

Have a think about what's the capability we can understand through there.

Our third piece of evidence we're going to consider - Penelope has joined in a number of small group teacher-led game situations over the past two weeks to feel different objects and respond to questions about attributes such as size and shape. She was using touch to identify and locate objects with specific attributes that the teacher asked for. For example, find something with a curved edge, with corner points, longer than and then Penelope accepted verbal support from peers in the group.

Now our final piece is a little lengthier.

The blocks were scattered all over the mat area and with her cane Penelope could feel them and she commented ‘the blocks feel like they are everywhere. We need to pack away like Pack Rat.’ Now Pack Rat is a character in the online story Sort It Out that we listened to yesterday. Pack Rat sorts his toys based on different attributes, so following teacher prompting to feel and describe the block attributes, the group then supported Penelope to determine where the blocks needed to go so she could pack them away and make sure that no one would walk on the blocks.

Penelope - This one's long, like my cane. Where does it go?

Jamie - That goes on the long bottom shelf. Take one step and bend down to the ground. Can you feel the shelf? Can you feel all the long ones on the bottom?

Penelope - Yes

And the group continued this process to pack all those blocks away.

Now, as you're thinking about that, I just want to acknowledge that they’re snapshots and pieces of evidence specifically for our webinar. What you're collecting and what you are doing may have more detail and show a greater length of time. What we're trying to do is take some of those snapshots with the key information and see how we can analyse, review that and make a judgment.

So we're gonna think about that now. So based on those, on that evidence, on those three little snapshots around Penelope's learning, which continua phase would you judge Penelope's learning to be more like at this point in time? Now we know in the application, I think many for those of you who are familiar with it have been in that our numeracy section has the option for you to decide between length, mass, capacity and time, so our measurement aspects, or our shape and spatial relationships. So we're gonna focus on the shape and spatial relationship judgment because that's what our example focuses on. We can see the observable learnings from the QKLG directly represented as the judgment we make in that three column order, emerging, exploring and extending.

So I want you to have a think about which phase you think Penelope's learning is more like at this point, and in Mentimeter you'll be able to select one of those. So if you can select which phase emerging, exploring or extending. And it's the interesting part when we're trying to make judgments about somebody we don't know in detail, we don't have that rich background and understanding. We're basing it on the language that we can see. So we can see a real split here between that exploring and that extending phase.

So let's think about why that might be. What was the language or the evidence or the information in the evidence sorry, that you saw that guided your judgment? What was it that made you go it's more like exploring or it's more like extending and please do feel free to use the chat box if you can't access Menti at this time.

That’s a really great observation there to say some of that evidence actually showed that Penelope -let me scroll back, sorry - that Penelope was relying on that scaffolding and peer support, but in some of that evidence she was really confident in expressing herself individually, and that's where our more like judgment is coming in because we go, even though we might see aspects of that extending starting to come through with those levels of support through peers, through adults. Her confidence is lifted, and she is showing capability, that there is still that level of support for Penelope.

So we could see that it was more like that exploring phase due to that language around support, but with those moments of showing aspects of extending as well. Doesn't mean we're not acknowledging that. It just means right now what's helpful to understand it is more like this in Penelope's learning.

So some of that language that you were just talking about, we look about, we could see that confidence and capability and that's highlighted on screen now see that capacity to navigate indoor and outdoor, completing some of those puzzles, being able to describe in everyday language attributes of those of shapes using touch and very tactile strategies for identifying and responding to questions to match and then using those, that building language to describe more confidently herself.  What we saw typically around that situation and support where it's in group situations, peer support, adult led and direction, following teacher prompting. Those are some of the key pieces that you might have noticed to help us get to that judgment.

That process of using your evidence, critically reflecting on and analysing the information that you've been able to gather helps you make a judgement across all of the five learning and development areas in the application.

Learning and development
Now the second part to our learning and development are those suggestions to support continuity of learning.

Suggestions to support continuity of learning
This is a new section for our transition statements and when you're creating them in the application for this year, it did used to be our additional information that was one paragraph of text. What we have now is further information that allows us to really focus in on the individual demonstration of capability with the explanation of those intentional strategies, practices and supports that have enabled success, particularly the level of support and the frequency of that support along with understanding of those situations.

Suggestions to support continuity of Wellbeing learning
We have example transition statements on the website where you can see how teachers have written and modelled this for us and how our suggestions support the judgments that we make. They provide further information to what we've talked about in terms of a capability.

So let's use the example of Jack that's from our website. The teacher has made a decision about Jack's autonomy and resilience, and judged that to be at the phase where Jack is recognising feelings and expressing why he feels a particular way. Now, the teacher has also recognised, as she's been working through this, that learning is interconnected, and how Jack has demonstrated those capabilities is actually quite closely linked to another judgment that the teacher made. And that's about the way Jack's showing awareness of safe and unsafe risks to make safe choices.
So to share that expertise and knowledge about that connection, the teacher has created a suggestion to give more context and detail that helps the family understand the child as a learner, but also the school if it is shared with them.  So here what we learn from the suggestion, that's giving more information about the judgments, is that we can see that the suggestion's giving information about Jack's capability in situations, particularly where he feels they may be unsafe or unfair, and how he uses established group expectations to support him express his feelings in that situation and then be able to resolve the issue. And what this does is provide really clear insight into the value of continuing that strategy of having clearly established group goals to help Jack as he transitions into school.

Suggestion to support continuity of Identity learning

So it was a really quick whip through of that example. Let's do some more deeper thinking about that. We'll take another example. If we think about this fictional child Frank, Frank acts with independence and perseverance by organising self and belongings in familiar routines. So we know that familiarity with expectations and routines in new environments is an important part of successful transition.

How might we craft a suggestion that helps teachers understand that a bit further and be able to support Frank? I've got two suggestions on screen. I want you just to quietly think about these as I read them out. And I want you to be thinking about which one is a stronger suggestion to support that process of transition and continuity of learning.

Suggestion A - Frank can transition between outdoor and indoor environments and different activities each day.

Now suggestion B - Frank successfully navigates multistep processes to transition between outdoor and indoor environments and different activities by using visual plans prior to and during daily routines.

I'm just going to give you a moment to think about those, and I'll ask you to share in Mentimeter in just a moment which one you think is stronger.

Okay, have a think about that. Which one is stronger?

I think it's unanimous. Suggestion B was absolutely the stronger suggestion to support that continuity. Tell me what made it stronger. What was the information in that suggestion that made it a really strong way of supporting Frank?

Absolutely. So what you got was greater specificity in the details and you got to some of those strategies, those really tangible things that can be carried on as a starting point into Prep, because we know even when we write these in November, there is a long time between November and when they start school. So these are really important starting points for our Prep teachers. Great. So yeah, that language is, language was a bit clearer and it wasn't just repeating or reiterating what the judgment said, it was adding those finer details and depth of strategies. So we saw that through, it actually could talk to what the capability looked like, what was Frank capable of in managing routines. Well, he's actually capable of navigating those multistep processes, with the support of visual plans and the frequency of those plans was prior to and during routines, specifically the situations where you're moving between outdoor and indoor environments or moving between different activities.

So we could see that as you mentioned that real specificity and detail and in-depth information about what that looks like for Frank.

Suggestions for continuity of learning
So those suggestions are really important in being able to champion those learning capabilities and to provide further information on support and continuity and those strategies and practices that you have found successful and that have enabled the child to demonstrate their learning.

Webinar outline

So how do we take all that information that we're gathering and enter that into a transition statement application to bring together a statement to support young children?

Transition statement and the KTS app consultation
I want to reassure you that the process of updating the transition statements and the application this year has been really robust. On screen now you can see the five key groups that we consulted with around transition statements and how they might be improved to support children and families. Kindergartens were our top group. We had over 1300 individual teachers and organisations come through and give us feedback around how they would like to see the transition statement and application progress, but we also heard from primary schools and from parents. And I can let you know some of that feedback that we received as we have a look at what are those significant changes to a transition statement and how does the app work to be able to produce that document.

Transition statement update
So let's start with the transition statement itself. What you will have noticed if you've been in to have a look at the examples is that there's been a shift in the layout and the information, but also how some of that content is organised.

Layout and information
What you will see now is that the transition statement is three pages. It starts with a cover page followed by two pages on learning and development.

Cover page
On the cover page, the kindergarten attendance information, all that administrative information has been consolidated into one section, so there can be a quick scan of that to get a sense of access and participation for children.

Also on the cover page there's some new information. What you will see now is parent/carer consent that has been provided to discuss the transition statement information. This was a really important one to schools, depending on their processes. Once the transition statement was downloaded and taken out of the app, there was no way to come back and understand from that statement whether that Prep teacher had permission to contact you as the kindergartens and they were, they really wanted to know that, they're wanting to build those relationships. So that now doesn't just sit in the app, it's also printed on your transition statement.

The other piece came from our family consultation and school consultation for greater clarity on what information is included in the transition statement? So you'll see there's a description there that links that really tightly so people know that what you are responsible for describing is directly related to your QKLG and continua of learning and development.

New consent information

With the consent information, you'll see there's greater specificity in defining who has the right to discuss transition statement information. So you'll see it specifies now kindergarten teacher, Prep teacher and school leaders with the responsibility for transition to Prep, are the people who have the right to discuss the information, the child's information in a transition statement.

Cover page
Also on the cover page you'll see that the parent, carer and child input, their perspectives, and your perspectives on the child as a learner are now fore fronted. They don't sit at the end of a statement. Our parent associations and schools told us that was really valuable to them to understand the child as a learner more holistically before jumping into learning and development. So they sit at the start now to set that frame to give that more holistic picture.

In the application and in the Word template, there are some cues and instruct text around what you might include in those sections as you are going. If you're looking for what could I put in here, there are some guidance on that in the instruct text in both the app and the word template. One of the things I want to draw your attention to, we heard clearly from kindergarten that it was valuable to them to be able to have more characters and more space to talk to the individual learner.
So in that child as a learner section, we've doubled the space. It's gone from 300 characters to 600 for you to be able to do that.

Learning and development aligned to the QKLG 2024

In our learning and development areas, we worked tirelessly with teachers and through consultation as we reviewed that QKLG 2024 to consider those observable learnings. In the application, those observable learnings have been updated and that language now aligns to a QKLG 2024. So that's where you'll see your observable learning judgments generated into sentences for you, and that all aligns with our updated guideline.

Suggestions to support continuity

That is followed by those suggestions as we looked at a little bit earlier.

Bullet points to organise content
Even though the example that is on the website shows three suggestions to support that continuity of learning, there's flexibility there for you to make the decision about how much information you might need to share based on the individual. So you do have to do a minimum of one suggestion to support that learner, but you can do up to a maximum of three suggestions and what that's done is given you a range of 200 characters to 600 characters. So if you use all three suggestions, that gives you 600 characters. That is double the space than what you had previously in each learning and development area. So we've given you more space there to be able to talk to the individual, their capabilities and the supports.

KTS app functionality
Now in the transition statement application itself, you'll see all of those updates in the app as well to be able to generate that statement. What you'll also see are some app features that have been updated, particularly navigation functionality, flexibility in those suggestions and how we work through those suggestions and some other information around the app that I'll share. We looked at that consent information. There's some reporting functionality for people with the role of Director. And then I'll share with you an open date for that function of creating new transition statements.

Portal landing page
So once parents have provided you with consent to create in the application, we know that Consent form 1 is that first step. We ask parents for consent to use the application. It's not consent to create a transition statement. You must do that. It's the format they are saying they are comfortable with. So when they provide you consent, you can come into the application. Now if you don't get consent, if the parent says no, I'm not comfortable with my child's information in an online platform. That's when you use the word template that's available on our QCAA website. You also use that word template in some other situations, which I'll describe in a moment.
So once you've got that consent, you can click on that tile.

Consent to create
As I mentioned, without consent, use the template, but also if children don't meet that eligible age for kindergarten. So our application reflects the age range of children who are eligible for kindergarten. So for example, if you have a child whose birthday is after the 30th of June, but they have early entry into school. You use the word template.

Transition statements
So once you click on that transition statement tile, you click on transition statements and it brings you to what we call the summary page. Really important if you remember the summary page because if you do call for support, this is often where we'll ask for information from. So on the summary page you'll notice that there is that green button for create new statements. So when you click on that, the app will open to the child details.

Navigating the KTS app

This will always be the very first page that you do. You won't be able to do any other sections until you add in the child details. Once those child details are completed, that's where you now have flexibility to go through and choose which section you would like to start on. So if I enter the details and go, I would like to start at Active learning for this child, you can click on Active learning.

Learning and development information

That will open that up for you to work on. We've heard from teachers that that flexibility of navigating through was really important, so we've been able to make that happen. As you're entering that information and saving it, you are able to move between different sections.

What you'll notice as well is that you are able to partially complete information and save it and move out. You don't have to complete all the information on a page anymore, so you're able to move in and out, just making sure that you're saving that as you go, you’ve got that greater flexibility.

Again, filling these out, you see it holds that three column structure that represents our phases and you're using your evidence and your knowledge of the child to make these judgments.

That's our first section that we looked at earlier. Here's where you can pop your strategies in. What you will see is there is a box, to start with just one. You type your suggestion in, if you decide you would like to include another strategy, it's important to share some more information about a different aspect of learning.

Adding suggestions

You click on the add strategy and it will generate another box for you and that's where you write your second suggestion. Notice that you don't need to put a bullet point in, even though we talked about it being a bullet point structure now. You don't need to put that bullet point in. The app, when it generates the PDF for you, will do that automatically. So don't waste any of those characters putting bullet points in, that will do that for you.

Changing position of suggestions
Now, as you're working through, if you want to change the order of your suggestions, there's flexibility to do that. You can use the up and down arrows to reposition your suggestions.

Deleting suggestions
Or if you're working through and you've written a suggestion in Wellbeing that you think is very similar to one in Connectedness, you can delete and choose where you would like to prioritise that information just by using those that delete function, which will be very familiar, the garbage can icon.

Saving partially completed information
So you'll notice that that use of icons throughout to try and visually help navigate through and cue you in. If you have a look down this left hand side, what you'll see at the top is what's called the status of a transition statement, that lets you know where you are in the process of creating it.
In progress means you're working on it. You're trying to complete all the information.

You'll have green ticks and yellow icons that also let you know where you're at with that. A green tick means information has been completed in a section. A yellow icon means you haven't completed information in that section yet, and that can draw your attention to where you need to go.

Navigating the KTS app
That's just showing those navigation icons in a little bit more detail for you.

One of the things that I wanted to point out and a change in the app as well, the change between your status is now automatic. You don't have to choose complete for that to happen once you have all green ticks, once you've completed all the information in that transition statement.
It will automatically progress to complete for you. That will make a draft PDF available on your summary page. So you'll see the status is complete and you'll have a draft PDF there. This is the point where you share that draft with your families. Give them the opportunity to read and understand the information that's in a transition statement and then you can offer up Consent form 2. You can have that discussion to say, would you like me to share that information with the school? One thing to note about when a transition statement is in the completed phase, you can go back and edit any information. It doesn't lock any information now. That has been updated so that you can go back and edit all the information in there if you need to after your consultation with families.

So once you've had that conversation with families, once they've been able to read the transition statement, you can click on Submit.

Submitting transition statements and consent
That will bring up what we call this submit window where you enter in the consent that parents have provided on Consent Form 2. Now we know that sometimes parents might take a little bit longer to consider whether they would like that information to be shared. You don't have to wait for Consent Form 2 to be returned to submit your transition statements, you have a requirement to submit those and complete them in November.

So what you can do is you can submit your transition statement indicating that no consent has been provided. What that allows you to do is finalise your statement, get that draft PDF that you can give to families as the final copy, and that you then must save a copy to your records. What you can do if that consent form comes back later is you can edit your consent information. So you can go back in, select edit. It will bring this consent information up again. That's the only information you can change, and you can then adjust that so that it reflects the consent that the parents have given back to you in that written consent form.

KTS app functionality open date to create new statements

Some of that additional information I talked about. Each year what we're going to do is quarantine some time for maintenance and work for QCAA to do on the app. So that function to create a new statement will close on the 1st of January.

You'll still be able to access the statements you've submitted previously. You'll still be able to do administrator tasks if you're an administrator, you just won't be able to create a new statement. That will open up again as of the 1st of April.

FAQs
Now you've had, we’ve shared a lot of information this afternoon and I'm sure there are lots of questions and we're going to get to those very, very soon. Can I suggest to you that a great first point of call for any of your questions is our FAQ's, our frequently asked questions. They are very comprehensive and the majority of questions we receive actually can be found on the website really quickly and easily. So if you're in a hurry and you want that really quick response, our FAQ's are an excellent place to go. They're very comprehensive.

QCAA resources
We do also have other resourcing and information available on our website. When you go to our kindergarten section, you'll see the transition statement information. The FAQs can be accessed and our using the app and creating statements information is also there.

Can I just point out these grey headings have little drop down arrows. When you click on those, it expands the information so the consent forms, the word templates, other resources do sit in those. It's for a quick scan for you to say, oh, what am I looking for? Let me open that the resource is there. So do expand those to find the resources that sit in there. In this snip, this is also where you find the example transition statements. We now have three and a fourth is going to be published very soon. So if you want to see some examples of writing across different learners, you can have a look at those.

As we're wrapping up, understanding the resourcing that supports you is really important to us so that we're investing time in what will have an impact and help you do your job to the best of your ability. So if you were to ask QCAA for further support, what would that be? And I'd love to be really specific in that as well. So absolutely I'm going to get to questions very, very soon, but in terms of resourcing and support other than frequently asked questions and examples of transition statements and all the templates you need, is there anything else that you would like from QCAA to support you? So I'm just gonna pause for a moment 'cause we've got, we've come in at a good time to make sure I give time for those questions. What I might do is I might just move on to the next slide so I can get us to those questions for you. Just because I move on, I really ,I appreciate that, thank you. Beautiful. Yeah. So we often hear about those webinars for you to come back in to share that information, the recordings. Perfect. And it's about those multiple ways of accessing information, isn't it? Some of those multiple modes where people can't come in, we completely understand. Thank you very much.

Learning goal and success criteria

We'll be able to have a look at those and start thinking about what that looks like. So just because I've moved the slide, you should still be able to enter if you are midway.

Now we've we have come across a lot of information this afternoon. I have shared a lot with you. Really thinking about the ways that that transition statement has the purpose of supporting transition to school and continuity of learning. How that continua helps us describe capabilities and supports to give a really rich picture of a child's learning. And to further give details about the individual through those suggestions and then about accessing that Portal and creating statements using the app and some of those functionality changes that we hope make it a little more efficient for you to work through and navigate in a way that suits your ways of working.

Contacts

I'm very quickly just going to pop up our contact details again and my colleague Stacey has been online with me this afternoon in case of any major technology fails and I'll ask her to pop it in the chat box for me now that if you want to, you can click on that and then save that as an e-mail address to get in touch.

So every day the three of us are cycling through and responding to emails as quickly as we can. The workshops, I hope some of you were able to attend those workshops that we've been doing face to face, they are about to come to a close. So we have been on the road and may not have been as responsive as usual to your emails where we've been working and travelling. So please do get in touch with us, it can be around transition statements, as I said, or around implementing the QKLG and any questions you have.

Transition statement questions
So I'm gonna pop Mentimeter up. What this does for our questions is helps me navigate them one at a time so they don't move too quickly through and I don't miss any. What I'll do is if I get repeat questions I will just skip those so we can move through quickly and hopefully get to everybody's questions.

Great questions. So in terms of how your gathering the parent, care and child perspectives. What you saw at the start, if you were able to, and you saw all of those practice shares, were absolutely ways of keeping that communication channel open with your families to understand their expectations, understand their concerns, hear from them about what they would like the school to know. So whether that's through your general conversations, whether that is through written communication with families, you'll know your families best and how they prefer to communicate and what they're comfortable with. What the draft PDF does is gives you the opportunity to take what you've heard and you know from families, put that into a transition statement and let them read it. They can then offer some suggestion to go, I actually would like to add this, change this or could you put this in.  So you're doing that first interpretation based on your knowledge, relationship and communication, but the families can contribute further once they read it.

So in terms of when they're due for submission, your kindergarten funding essentials set out all of what's mandatory for you. QCAA doesn't mandate that. What your funding essentials tell us is statements are to be shared are to be created and shared with families in November. So November is the only timeframe that we can give you because that's what your requirements say. That'll be up to you to set when in November you are working towards considering when might that transition and continuity of learning information best be shared with the locals, with your families, and then potentially schools with consent to support that whole process of transition and continuity. So there is no set date but it must be in November.

So when we're thinking about those days enrolled and days absent, our FAQs have some guidance around that as well that let you know that it relates specifically to kindergarten funding. I know this is challenging for long daycare centres, where you are navigating all year round care and education. The transition statement refers to the funded hours, which are those 15 hours per week over the 40 weeks. So enrolled, how many days has a child been enrolled in those 15 hours a week for how many weeks? And the absent days apply to those enrolled days, so all specific to the kindergarten funding.

So great question around children who are returning for a second year of kindergarten. Every year that a child attends, you can create it in the Portal. So for the first year that they've received funding and attended your kindergarten, you can do it in the Portal, you submit it and you do it in that first example that I showed you with no consent, because there's no consent to share that. It's not going anywhere. Submit it with no consent. That'll finalise the PDF. You can keep it for your records, share it with the family, and use that to inform your second year of kindergarten.
At the second year of kindergarten, you can use the Portal again. What you might get is a message that says it recognises these details have already been used. It's just a prompt to go, to think about, oh, do I need to do a second one? Yes, if I do, you keep going. It doesn't block you. It doesn't prevent you from creating a second statement. So yes, please do use the Portal and where it doesn't need to go anywhere, no consent. That way, with no consent, the only person who can access it is yourself as the teacher or anyone your administrator has authorised as an appropriate person at the service to access that information.

So the word template is an interactive word template that's provided as the alternative to the Portal, when the parents don't give consent to use the Portal. It is sitting on the website on that transition statement resource page I showed earlier. And it sits under the first grey heading of obtaining consent to use the Portal. You'll see it sitting with Consent form 1. If you don't get consent, you download that word template and what it does is tries to replicate the statement that's created in the app so that each child gets a consistent look, feel and information for those. They were also used for our early entry children.

OK, so this one might be a bit more of an individualised one. I might need some more information on around in order to create transition statements you need a transition statement role. Editor, submitter, director or delegate. So if you can view them but can't create them, I'm suspecting you might be a state delivered kindergarten. In state delivered kindergarten you'll have often two accounts. You'll have your state school primary school account, then there'll be a separate kindergarten account. So often you view it through the school account, but you create it through the kindergarten. So it might be that. So if that's your question, can I encourage you to e-mail our QKLG inbox and we might be able to get in touch and get a bit more detail there to be able to help you with that quite specific issue you've got.

So I did answer that question about yes you do, you must do transition statements for children for every year they are in a kindergarten funded program. In terms of dropping down your days, that would depend on when that happened and you would probably need to check in with the department around what they would expect at that point in time, because it is the department that set this as the expectation. We provide the tool for you to use. The department have set the expectation that that is the tool to use. So I would, I would get in touch with them and say at this point in time they're no longer receiving kindergarten funding, but they did at one point. Do I still need to do a statement?

Absolutely. Transition statements can be deleted. That is linked to the role that you have. So you'll need to make sure, your administrator will need to make sure, that somebody has the role of Director in the application. That's the only role that has permission to delete a transition statement. So it can be done, just make sure you have the right role.
So we have talked about that one and that is on our FAQs as well if you need to go back and refresh.

So again, reiterating, it's the funded hours, so children will not, it's that 15 hours per week, whatever your funding model is. However, you see that across the week, some long daycares say that 15 hours comes across three days, so it's three days a week and it's those three days that would be the days you count as your enrolled days.

So if your child, if there's a child only coming one day and they don't receive kindergarten funding, there's no requirement to create a transition statement for them. We would ask you to consider about the equity and fairness and how that child would be supported through that transition to school process along with their peers if they don't receive a transition statement. But you're correct, it's not a requirement for you.

And it looks like we're back to the start of our questions. Thank you for hanging in there for three extra minutes at the end of the session. We really thank you for coming through and joining us and encouraging you, I encourage you to use that qklg@qcaa.qld.edu.au e-mail to reach out to us so we can help with any more of those specific queries that you have.

Have a lovely evening. Thank you so much for joining us.