University play aims for an IMPACT

The move from primary to secondary school can be an anxious time for some children. To help ease their fears and address their concerns, the University of Teesside is to stage a one-hour play which explores this issue. Entitled ‘Transitions’, the play will be performed for the first time by touring company IMPACT, at the University on Thursday 28 June.

The play will be performed twice to an invited audience at 10.30am and 1.30pm. There will be a photo opportunity of IMPACT’s three actors with some children from the audience at 1pm on Thursday 28 June in the University’s Main Hall, Brittan Building. Please note, no other photographs can be taken later, for example of the actors performing to the audience. The play is for an invited audience only, not the general public. For more information please call Stephen Laing on 01642 342962, e-mail pr@tees.ac.uk.

The performance has been organised by the University’s Schools & Colleges Partnerships team and funded by the Government’s Aim Higher initiative and the Learning and Skills Council. The audience will total nearly 400 for both performances and include Year Six (aged 10 to 11) pupils from 11 primary schools across the Tees Valley, who have taken part in the University’s Meteor Scheme. Meteor was launched by the University in 1999. It aims to inspire local primary children to consider further and higher education through a series of activities on the main campus, and by working with University student mentors.

In addition, the audience will include young carers, looked-after children and four Year Seven (aged 11 to 12) peer mentors and two teachers from the Unity City Academy, Middlesbrough.

IMPACT will portray both pupils and teachers in the play, which will explore a range of issues, including:

• Finding your way around a much bigger School
• Being alongside older children
• Getting used to a timetable
• Is the uniform correct?
• Bullying
• Having different subject teachers
• Peer pressure.

Gary Crawley, Schools and Colleges Partnerships Manager, said: “The play has been devised with input from a teacher from Ormesby Secondary School. We wanted a teacher’s opinions about some of the myths surrounding the move to secondary school. So hopefully we can help to make the primary to secondary transition a smoother, easier process for the young people in the audience. The play will be interactive and the audience will also have the opportunity to fill in a questionnaire afterwards to see if the play has helped them.”

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