Best Practice

Reception to key stage 1: Achieving transfer of learning

Legislation and guidance Curriculum Pedagogy Reception Key stage 1
Reception, key stage 1 and beyond – learning transfer is a crucial part of effective education. Juliet Mickelburgh considers the EYFS Characteristics of Effective Learning and how we might transfer this key learning from the early years into primary


In his presentation at the World Education Summit in March this year, Professor John Hattie spoke about learning transfer. His definition of learning is: “The process of developing sufficient surface knowledge to then move to deeper understanding such that one can appropriately transfer this learning to new tasks and situations.” (Lock, 2021)

Hattie describes three aspects to learning: surface learning (the content and knowledge); deep learning (the how, connections between ideas); and transfer of learning (the move from surface to deep learning, consolidating and transferring to other domains).

He explains that the surface level knowledge is needed for children to move to deep learning and transfer. He associates words such as “discovery”, “enquiry”, “patterns” and “problem-based” with the transfer of learning.

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