Decoding the criteria sheet
Most parents have seen one. Far fewer have been shown that the verbs — describe, explain, analyse, evaluate — are the actual instructions, and that's where the marks are won.
In Year 6, an adult holds it together. In Year 7, your child does.
It isn't that the work gets harder. It's that the support quietly falls away, and nobody tells parents it's happening. Set for Seven is for parents, not more homework for kids.
Open the free planner →No sign-up, nothing to install. Works on a phone.
What changes
The work isn't the hard part
Year 7 arrives with a different set of expectations, and they all land in the first week. Most of them are never explained to students or to parents.
Year 6Year 7
One teacher who notices the moment you're lost
→
Eight teachers who see you three times a week
Assignments broken into chunks, with a check-in most days
→
A three-week task, and the middle of it is yours to manage
Work gets marked
→
Work is graded against a criteria sheet you're expected to read
Ask the teacher who already knows you
→
Speak up in a room full of people you've only just met
None of this is content. It's all responsibility — and it transfers on day one of Year 7, whether the child is ready or not. A tutor fixes the maths. Nobody fixes this.
The free planner
Work out the time your child actually has
Three weeks until an assignment is due sounds like plenty. Then you add sport training, music lessons and everything else in a normal week — and three weeks turns out to be about eight sessions where work can genuinely happen. The planner shows a student that at the start, not the night before. They enter their own steps and their own estimates; it does the arithmetic and shows them where it doesn't fit. Prints for the fridge, or saves as a tick-off checklist.
Try it now →Being built now
Practical guides for starting high school
Each one short, specific, and written for parents rather than teachers. No jargon, and something you can actually do this evening.
Asking for help
Plenty of students arrive confident and still go quiet when they're stuck in a new school. Scripts to practise, so the words are ready before they're needed.
The digital setup
Files that can be found, work that's backed up, and proof an assignment actually submitted. Twenty minutes now saves a very bad evening later.
The maths Year 7 assumesNearly ready
Tables, division, fractions to percentages, order of operations. Secondary teachers expect these to be automatic, and many students leave primary without them.
Note-taking and typingNearly ready
Secondary teachers talk; students are expected to capture it. Practice in both skills, so more of what's said in class ends up on the page.
Readiness check
A few minutes, and a plain-English read on which of these to focus on first.
Be first to know
Each guide is released as it's finished and properly tested in a classroom. One email when the next one is ready, and nothing else in between.
No spam, and unsubscribe any time. Your address isn't shared with anyone.
Who's behind it
I'm Dave. I've taught for 26 years, and around 12 of those in Year 6 — the year where you can see high school coming and you're still the person who can do something about it.
That vantage point has made one thing very clear: what separates the students who thrive in Year 7 from the ones who struggle is almost never the content. It's whether they can read what an assignment is actually asking, organise their own time, and ask for help before it's urgent. Those are teachable — but they're rarely taught, because they don't belong to any one subject.
I'm also living it. My son started Year 7 this year, so I've seen this change from the parent's side of the kitchen table as well as the teacher's. It's a bigger shift than anyone tells you, and parents shouldn't have to work it out on their own.