Back to school... for Year 8 SCALES
Our wonderful SCALES children have just started Year 8 and our 5th (Yes, FIFTH!) round of data collection has begun!
The past year has flown by in a blur, with meticulous planning and preparation for the year ahead. As all our children have now made the transition from primary school to secondary school, we had the important and somewhat daunting task of contacting all their new schools to gather their support for our study – we are extremely grateful to all our SCALES secondary schools for facilitating our research and accommodating our visits, whilst making the whole process (relatively) easy.
It’s exciting to revisit the children and see their development. In the past two years they have not only moved from primary school to secondary school, but have grown from children into young adolescents – and also grown several inches with some now towering above us researchers! The children are as keen as ever to take part in SCALES and it’s wonderful to see the smile on their face when they realise we are back to visit. Or maybe that’s because they’ll miss a few lessons?!
Now that the children are older, they are also keen to find out more about SCALES. We visited some of our SCALES schools during the Summer term to speak to the children about why they have been taking part in SCALES and to answer their many questions. It was also fascinating to hear their ideas about what we might want to study in the future! Our recent school visits have presented us with many more questions about SCALES, whilst a few children have asked if/when we will be visiting again…
It’s been a fantastic start to the Year 8 data collection and we look forward to seeing all our SCALES children in the year ahead!