Moving to a new school with new classmates, new teachers, and new subjects, can be overwhelming for a teenager, especially if it involves a transition to high school. It is completely normal for students to feel nervous about starting high school, but it does not need to be scary!

Parents play an important role in assisting a child moving through this important life transition. Hopefully you have already started the process by doing a few basic things in the previous two years, but if you realise that you have not yet focused on it enough, do not put it on hold any longer as the workload at high school level is much more challenging than before and parental involvement is an important ingredient for academic success.

Encourage and assist your child to build good study habits like note taking, proper organisation and time management throughout grade 8. This will form a solid foundation for the high school years to come. Understand your child’s academic strengths, weaknesses, and learning pace.  True support and guidance to choose the correct subjects (as an example), are not possible if you do not know whether your child is able to keep up with certain learning content or not.

If you have not yet started to withdraw from your child’s learning process, now is the time to do so.  Independent learning is of utmost importance as your child starts their high school career.  Your child must take responsibility for scheduling time for homework and assignments and keeping track of deadlines.  Your child’s mentor at Abbotts College Centurion will provide some guidance as well and the supervised Homework Sessions provide extra structure, but it does not help if the healthy learning patterns are not reinforced at home.

You must have meaningful conversations with your child about attending high school or attending a new school. To assist your child to make sense of the mixture of excitement and nervousness they will most probably experience in the weeks before the school starts and the first few weeks after it started, you must ask your child about their concerns. There are practical solutions for most of the common concerns they might experience. For instance, if they are worried about getting lost, a school plan can help to ease your teenager’s mind. By providing templates for things like rosters and study timetables, you can further help to structure and ease your child’s mind about the workload.

Hopefully your child’s new school offered an Orientation Day during which they were given the opportunity to get their timetable, meet the Grade Head and the subject teachers, and learn what to expect from high school. It is obviously a great way to meet some new classmates in a more relaxed environment. Your child would typically also have been given a chance to become more familiar with the school’s layout, so they would not be completely overwhelmed on the first day.  If there was such an Orientation Day and your child could not attend, or if your child joined the school later than the rest of the learners, it might also lead to anxiety because your child might be nervous about information that they missed.  Encourage your child to go to the Grade Head or Mentor teacher to ask for access to documents and information that might have been shared.

Sanet Janse Van Rensburg

Ensure that your child has the right school supplies. You should have received the stationery and textbook list from the school. Your child can only get off to a strong start if they have the necessary tools to do so.  If your child does not yet have the prescribed textbooks (and the correct edition of the textbook) when classes start, it will prevent them from starting on the front foot and will lead to unnecessary stress.

Without realistic goals, your child will lack direction and motivation.  Sit down with your child and set goals to achieve during the year. Your child’s mentor will also provide guidance with regards to goal setting for each Mark Reading, and it will be expected from you as a parent to follow your child’s goals and the achievement thereof, as it is documented in your child’s school diary, throughout the year.

Have regular talks about how things are going in each of your child’s classes. Ask about subjects your child love and about those they don’t. This information will help you to encourage your child to make use of the support being offered during supervised homework sessions.

Most teenagers do not voluntarily share information about what is happening at school. Abbotts College gives out seven report cards with marks and effort ratings which will help to solve that problem. The importance of your reaction after receiving the report card cannot be emphasised enough.  If your child is discouraged after a disappointing report, emphasise the importance of acknowledging that they have not mastered certain concepts “yet”. Explain to them the importance of perseverance and facing the challenges that cross one’s path. And if your child brings home an excellent report, reiterate the concept that talent is not going to keep on delivering results if it is not accompanied by the determination to work hard and grow. In the bigger scheme of things, the development of such a growth mindset, will mean even more that mastering certain subject content. For further help in preparing for high school, visit .

Sanet van REnsburg (Principal of Abbotts College Centurion)